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What is Yii
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Yii is a high-performance, component-based PHP framework for rapidly developing large-scale Web applications. Yii enables maximum reusability in Web
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programming and can significantly accelerate your Web application development
process. The name Yii (pronounced `Yee` or `[ji:]`) is an acronym for
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**Yes It Is!**.
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Requirements
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To run a Yii-powered Web application, you need a Web server that supports
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PHP 5.4.0 or greater.
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For developers who want to use Yii, understanding object-oriented
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programming (OOP) is very helpful, as Yii is a pure OOP framework.
Yii 2.0 also makes use of the latest features of PHP, including [namespaces](http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.namespaces.php),
so you should be familiar with how those work, too.
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What is Yii Best for?
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Yii is a generic Web programming framework that can be used for developing
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virtually any type of Web application. Because it is light weight and
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equipped with sophisticated caching mechanisms, Yii is especially suited
to high-traffic applications such as portals, forums, content
management systems (CMS), e-commerce projects, and so on.
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How does Yii Compare with Other Frameworks?
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- Like most PHP frameworks, Yii uses the MVC (Model-View-Controller) design approach.
- Yii is a full-stack framework providing many solutions and components, such as logging, session management, caching, etc.
- Yii strikes a good balance between simplicity and being feature-rich.
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- Syntax and overall development usability are taken seriously by the Yii development team.
- Performance is one of the key goals for the Yii framework.
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- The Yii development team is constantly watching what other Web frameworks are doing to consider what best practices and
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  features should be incorporated into Yii. The initial Yii release was heavily influenced by Ruby on Rails.
  Still, no framework or feature is being blindly copied into Yii; all decisions are based upon what's best
  for Web developers and in keeping with Yii's philosophy.