The framework for people who already know PHP.
  • download
    get the latest version.
  • why?
    what makes Cognifty next generation?
  • docs
    check out the tutorial.
  • about
    a brief overview of Cognifty's concepts.

Cognifty is a sound framework based on tested, proven ideas of building Web apps. The simple, object-oriented design has been used on the largest and smallest applications on the Web. Cognifty lets you program PHP, it doesn't try to be any other language or any other framework. Here are some things Cognifty has that you won't find in other "frameworks"
  • Users and groups
  • Pluggable handlers for controllers, templating, configuration, and layout
  • 3-level Module / Service / Event structure
  • Real applications are built with Cognifty
  • Run apps built with other "frameworks"

Release Notes for Cognifty-0014


Cognifty is the new PHP framework based on old ideas. Flexible enough to run other frameworks inside itself, Cognifty is the perfect choice for new integration or legacy development. This is a standard release.

Upgrade complexity level: Low

Database changes required: no Changes to config file definitions: yes Breaking changes to custom code: no *New fields were added for module overrides and module customizations

New Features

  • Made admin navigation more consistent by using better names for pages.
  • Added more specific CGI handling for nanoweb in the initRequestTickets function.
  • Added flimsy support for rowCount into the pdo sqlite library.
  • Added support for local module overrides
  • Added a browse section to article sections.
  • Changed bootstrap and Cgn_ObjectStore to use lazy loading techniques. Cached config settings are even faster now.

Download Cognifty 0014 from Sourceforge.net

Write Your Own Virtual Host Control Panel - Part 1

the story of embedded PHP servers

Virtual host control panels are a major boon for anyone managing more than 2-3 hosts on the same server. I’ve heard a lot of people say that these Web tools are useless because if you know the all of the server commands then you don’t need the help of a GUI. These people feel that you should know how to do everything by hand, not just understand the basic concepts behind virtual hosts, DNS entries, stopping and starting services, etc.

The flip side of the coin is that these control panels can add a lot of consistency to your work. They reduce the margin of error that a human can bring to the table when editing files and performing commands “by hand”.

Release Notes for Cognifty-0013


Cognifty is the new PHP framework based on old ideas. Flexible enough to run other frameworks inside itself, Cognifty is the perfect choice for new integration or legacy development.

This is mainly a bug-fix relase for 12 with new search and 404 handling capabilities.

Upgrade complexity level: Low

  1. Database changes required: no
  2. Changes to config file definitions: no
  3. Breaking changes to custom code: no

Release Notes for Cognifty-0012


Cognifty is the new PHP framework based on old ideas. Flexible enough to run other frameworks inside itself, Cognifty is the perfect choice for new integration or legacy development.

This release includes a lot of new features in the blog module. The signal/slot mechanism now can support multiple slots per signal.

Upgrade complexity level: Medium

  1. Database changes required: yes
  2. Changes to config file definitions: yes *
  3. Breaking changes to custom code: no

* Changes were made to the way the signals/slots are defined in the signal.ini file.

New Features

  • Added tagline and description saving to blogs.
  • Altered blog module to set the site tag line and display the blog description.
  • Added an article's title to the html page title.
  • Added 4th init parameter to trusted services.
  • Altered redirectHome and getHomeUrl methods to take an extra array of parameters to pass along.
  • Made significant speedups to the bootstrap process.
  • Added PDO-mysql database driver.
  • Added ability to have local.ini on a per module basis for local config settings.
  • Changed slot/signal configuration syntax to support multiple slots per signal.
  • Added styleshout's ReFresh 1.0 as the default template.
  • Added support for using excerpts in blog posts.
  • Added social bookmarks to the blog module.
  • Added next and previous links to main blog page.

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed unpublish/delete links for blog posts.
  • Fixed a potential problem when freeing MySQL result sets out of order.
  • Fixed problem with saving excerpt field for blogs and pages.
  • Fixed page numbering bug which caused page 1 to appear twice in the blog.

Minor Changes

  • Added new object store unit test.
  • Small spacing tweak to refresh template.
  • Added template function to set the global site tag line.
  • Added loading gif for suckerfish to admin template to stop bad 404s
  • Minor speedups to the most commonly used functions.
  • If a user is not accepting cookies, consider them to be flooding for the purposes of throttling trust plugin.

Release Notes for Cognifty-0011


Release 11 is a bug-fix release for 10. Release 10 had some issues with ini files. Users upgrading from 09 will not notice any problems, but new installations of 10 might not function at all.

New Features

  • Admin dashboard page
  • Site structure page now creates bread crumbs
  • Added version number and revision to the core ini file
  • Added Zend Lucene search
  • Strip repetitive "tail" from URL when logging

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed issue with vanity URLs not parsing properly
  • Fixed log polluting error on redirects
  • Fixed problem with missing ini setting

Minor Changes

  • exec() method added to db library for non-query type statements
  • Cleanup unneeded ini file settings.
  • Added an explanation on the welcome page about no home page configured in the admin.
  • Added getReleaseNumber and getBuildNumber methods to Cgn_SystemRunner class.
  • Change session method name from unSet to clear, to avoid confusion.
  • Added popup icons to the default icon set

Download the latest version from SourceForge.net.

Release Notes for Cognifty-0014


Cognifty is the new PHP framework based on old ideas. Flexible enough to run other frameworks inside itself, Cognifty is the perfect choice for new integration or legacy development. This is a standard release.

Upgrade complexity level: Low

Database changes required: no Changes to config file definitions: yes Breaking changes to custom code: no *New fields were added for module overrides and module customizations

New Features

  • Made admin navigation more consistent by using better names for pages.
  • Added more specific CGI handling for nanoweb in the initRequestTickets function.
  • Added flimsy support for rowCount into the pdo sqlite library.
  • Added support for local module overrides
  • Added a browse section to article sections.
  • Changed bootstrap and Cgn_ObjectStore to use lazy loading techniques. Cached config settings are even faster now.

Download Cognifty 0014 from Sourceforge.net

Write Your Own Virtual Host Control Panel - Part 1

the story of embedded PHP servers

Virtual host control panels are a major boon for anyone managing more than 2-3 hosts on the same server. I’ve heard a lot of people say that these Web tools are useless because if you know the all of the server commands then you don’t need the help of a GUI. These people feel that you should know how to do everything by hand, not just understand the basic concepts behind virtual hosts, DNS entries, stopping and starting services, etc.

The flip side of the coin is that these control panels can add a lot of consistency to your work. They reduce the margin of error that a human can bring to the table when editing files and performing commands “by hand”.

Release Notes for Cognifty-0013


Cognifty is the new PHP framework based on old ideas. Flexible enough to run other frameworks inside itself, Cognifty is the perfect choice for new integration or legacy development.

This is mainly a bug-fix relase for 12 with new search and 404 handling capabilities.

Upgrade complexity level: Low

  1. Database changes required: no
  2. Changes to config file definitions: no
  3. Breaking changes to custom code: no

Release Notes for Cognifty-0012


Cognifty is the new PHP framework based on old ideas. Flexible enough to run other frameworks inside itself, Cognifty is the perfect choice for new integration or legacy development.

This release includes a lot of new features in the blog module. The signal/slot mechanism now can support multiple slots per signal.

Upgrade complexity level: Medium

  1. Database changes required: yes
  2. Changes to config file definitions: yes *
  3. Breaking changes to custom code: no

* Changes were made to the way the signals/slots are defined in the signal.ini file.

New Features

  • Added tagline and description saving to blogs.
  • Altered blog module to set the site tag line and display the blog description.
  • Added an article's title to the html page title.
  • Added 4th init parameter to trusted services.
  • Altered redirectHome and getHomeUrl methods to take an extra array of parameters to pass along.
  • Made significant speedups to the bootstrap process.
  • Added PDO-mysql database driver.
  • Added ability to have local.ini on a per module basis for local config settings.
  • Changed slot/signal configuration syntax to support multiple slots per signal.
  • Added styleshout's ReFresh 1.0 as the default template.
  • Added support for using excerpts in blog posts.
  • Added social bookmarks to the blog module.
  • Added next and previous links to main blog page.

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed unpublish/delete links for blog posts.
  • Fixed a potential problem when freeing MySQL result sets out of order.
  • Fixed problem with saving excerpt field for blogs and pages.
  • Fixed page numbering bug which caused page 1 to appear twice in the blog.

Minor Changes

  • Added new object store unit test.
  • Small spacing tweak to refresh template.
  • Added template function to set the global site tag line.
  • Added loading gif for suckerfish to admin template to stop bad 404s
  • Minor speedups to the most commonly used functions.
  • If a user is not accepting cookies, consider them to be flooding for the purposes of throttling trust plugin.

Release Notes for Cognifty-0011


Release 11 is a bug-fix release for 10. Release 10 had some issues with ini files. Users upgrading from 09 will not notice any problems, but new installations of 10 might not function at all.

New Features

  • Admin dashboard page
  • Site structure page now creates bread crumbs
  • Added version number and revision to the core ini file
  • Added Zend Lucene search
  • Strip repetitive "tail" from URL when logging

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed issue with vanity URLs not parsing properly
  • Fixed log polluting error on redirects
  • Fixed problem with missing ini setting

Minor Changes

  • exec() method added to db library for non-query type statements
  • Cleanup unneeded ini file settings.
  • Added an explanation on the welcome page about no home page configured in the admin.
  • Added getReleaseNumber and getBuildNumber methods to Cgn_SystemRunner class.
  • Change session method name from unSet to clear, to avoid confusion.
  • Added popup icons to the default icon set

Download the latest version from SourceForge.net.