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- What is Yii framework
- Who uses Yii?
- Top Industries that use Yii
- What are the pros and cons of using the Yii Framework?
- The benefits of using Yii framework development services
- The disadvantages of the Yii framework
- How to Hire Yii Developers for Your Project?
- The final note on using Yii framework
- FAQ
Our company has been using the Yii framework for a long time for developing large projects. Development using Yii is one of our main areas of focus. Therefore, in this article, we gave a closer look at the framework and reviewed the most large-scale and well-known websites and applications developed using Yii framework.
What is Yii framework
Yii is a high-performance framework for PHP web application development. It has a component-based architecture and sophisticated caching support. In other words, it is flexible, lightweight, and fast. The framework is well suited for large-scale websites and applications, such as social networks, internal corporate systems, content management systems (CMS), online stores, RESTful web services, and so on.
Who uses Yii?
According to the YiiPowered resource, more than 600 companies use the Yii framework, and here are some of the largest and most interesting ones.
1. SkillShare
Technologies that have been used:
SkillShare is an American online learning platform that sponsors the Yii framework developers and actively uses it in their projects.
A little about statistics:
SkillShare started in 2010 as a small startup that attracted funding for $10 million in 4 years. SkillShare received another $40 million in investments from 2016 to 2018. As of March 2021, the platform had more than 27,000 courses in various domains.
2. iRobot
Technologies that have been used:
The US robot vacuum cleaner manufacturer uses Yii for its iRobot Select membership website (select.irobot.com).
A little about statistics:
The iRobot company was founded back in 1990. Until 2016 it was engaged in the development of both domestic and military robots. In 2020, about 1,200 employees worked in the company. At the end of 2020, the iRobot total annual revenue was $1,4 billion.
3. HumHub
Technologies that have been used:
HumHub is open-source software for accelerated social network development. It is based on the Yii framework and allows users to work with data through the database management systems (DBMS) MySQL and MariaDB.
A little about statistics:
The platform was originally developed by the German web agency Zeros + Ones. In 2015 HumHub became an independent company. HumHub also offers business subscriptions from €99 per month.
Technologies that have been used:
Kia is an automobile manufacturing company. Some of their IT projects are built using Yii and Vue.js frameworks. These projects were developed by our team.
A little about statistics:
Kia is the oldest and second largest automobile manufacturer in South Korea. 33% of the company is owned by Hyundai. In 2019, the company sold over 2,8 million vehicles.
5. Litnet
Technologies that have been used:
Litnet.com is a platform for self-published writers that is also an online library. The website is available in Russian, Ukrainian, English, and Spanish. In addition to the Yii framework, the website’s technology stack includes Memcached and Redis caching systems, RabbitMQ message broker, and MySQL DBMS.
A little about statistics:
Litnet.com has over 3.5 million monthly visits. Monthly book sales on the platform are around $1 million. Authors of the books receive 70% of the profit, and the creators of Litnet.com get the remaining 30%.
6. Craft CMS
Technologies that have been used:
Craft is a content management system that uses the Yii framework and can connect to MySQL and PostgreSQL to store data.
A little about statistics:
According to builtwith.com, approximately 80,000 websites use Craft. Some of the most famous companies that have chosen Craft for their projects are Rolls-Royce, the American television company PBS, the British online education platform FutureLearn and others.
7. 2GIS
Technologies that have been used:
2GIS is a free city map with contact details of all organizations. The backend of the web application uses the Yii framework and PostgreSQL DBMS. The Sphinx system and C++ daemons are responsible for the multi-criteria search. Nginx + Lua, Redis, and Alternative PHP Cache do the caching.
A little about statistics:
2GIS maps have been developed for cities in Russia, Kazakhstan, Italy, Czech Republic, Chile, United Arab Emirates, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Cyprus. The monthly audience of 2GIS is over 50 million users. In 2019, the company had about 4,500 employees, and its annual turnover amounted to about 53 million dollars. In 2020, Russian Forbes magazine put 2GIS in 6th place of the 20 most expensive Russian Internet companies.
Technologies that have been used:
Sonic Electronix is an US eCommerce retailer of specialty consumer electronics. Their website uses the Yii framework, jQuery library, and CoreJS framework.
A little about statistics:
Sonic Electronix was founded in 2000. They specialize in selling video and GPS navigation while also selling other electronics. They have over 100 employees and their revenue is $30 million.
9. Jayco
Technologies that have been used:
Jayco.inc is a company that manufactures recreation vehicles, to the tune of nearly 50,000 each year. In 2016, it was acquired by Thor Industries for $576 million. Their website uses Yii framework, Bootstrap.js, and JQuery library.
A little about statistics:
Jayco is a leading company in the automotive industry in the US. It was founded in 1968. Now, over 4,500 people work at Jayco.inc and the company has had over 1,2 million customers. The company’s revenue was estimated at $1,5 billion in 2021.
10. Vivint
Technologies that have been used:
Viving is a smart home company based in the US and Canada. Their website is built using the Yii framework and Bootstrap.js.
A little about statistics:
The company’s annual revenue is nearly $1,5 billion, and nearly 11,000 people worked there in 2021. In 2018, Vivint worked with Google to add two Google Home Mini devices to their starter kits.
Technologies that have been used:
Serta is the #1 mattress manufacturing company in the US. Their website is powered with Yii, React, and GraphQL.
A little about statistics:
Serta has 5,000 employees and the company’s annual revenue is $1,8 billion. The company’s brands include Serta and Beautyrest. Serta distributes its products in more than 10,000 retail stores.
11. Feniex
Technologies that have been used:
Feniex is an American manufacturer of visual and acoustic warning devices. The company’s website is built using AngularJS for the frontend, Yii framework for the backend and Microsoft Azure for storage.
A little about statistics:
It is a small manufacturing company with 100+ employees and annual revenue of $7.9 billion. In 2020, Feniex surpassed the $100 million sales milestone.
12. Machineseeker
Technologies that have been used:
Machineseeker is an online marketplace for selling used machinery. The machineseeker website runs on the Yii framework and uses PostgreSQL, Redis and ElasticSearch data storage solutions.
A little about statistics:
Their website has more than 9 million visitors per month. Machineseeker Group employs nearly 100 people. 200,000 machines are advertised on this platform in more than 2,000 categories.
Top Industries that use Yii
According to Enlyft, the Yii framework is actively used by companies in the US, India, UK and Ukraine.
Take at look at which industries use the Yii framework most:
What are the pros and cons of using the Yii Framework?
Let us have a closer look at the advantages and disadvantages of Yii for software development.
The benefits of using Yii framework development services
- MVC (Model-View-Controller) design pattern. This means that you won’t have to develop every single module and they will be created automatically.
- Yii supports layered data caching, fragment caching, page caching, and dynamic content, which helps reduce response time and speed up web application performance.
- It uses different security measures to prevent websites from attacks such as SQL injection, cross-site request forgery (CSRF), cookie tampering, and cross-site scripting (CSS)
- The framework provides tools for automation tasks like CRUD and model generators using Gii. It lets you create files for Create, Read, Update and Delete (CRUD) automatically.
- Bootstrap CSS comes out-of-the-box when you install Yii.
- Yii framework is easy to install by downloading a zip package, with no composer needed.
- Yii allows for the use of third-party interfaces if you merge different frameworks with it. You can use code from PEAR or Zend in it.
- The framework is supported by a large community of Yii developers.
The disadvantages of the Yii framework
And now, let’s look at the drawbacks of using Yii for your software development project.
- Ajax features are sometimes not well documented, so you might need to dive into JavaScript code or ask JavaScript developers for help.
- AR doesn’t support some doctrines such as AR queries.
- Yii depends on static methods and many software engineers stand against them.
As we can see, despite its drawbacks, the Yii framework has many advantages. It speeds up software development and simplifies the engineers’ work. At SECL Group, we have been using the Yii framework for a while. Based on our experience with it, we feel that it is a good choice to build scalable and high-performance products.
If you are interested in using this framework, here are some tips on how to find Yii developers for your project.
How to Hire Yii Developers for Your Project?
The very first step before you start searching for Yii software developers is to define your requirements for hiring candidates. They may include:
- the number of developers you need
- time you can spend on recruitment before the project starts
- expected levels of experience
- tech and non-tech skills you anticipate from candidates
- budget for hiring each candidate.
Once you are good to go with all this stuff, you can start looking for suitable candidates.
The most popular way is to hire an engineer through a software development company that has Yii web development services in their tech stack, which means you can hire experienced engineers who have already completed real projects using this technology.
We have developed many projects using Yii framework, including both internal corporate systems and external projects using this framework. From our experience with this framework, it is a good choice to build high-load projects and those having enhance security requirements. Feel free to reach out to us if you need help with Yii development.
The final note on using Yii framework
Given the numerous advantages of Yii framework, such as reduced development time, good security, and regular updates, large companies choose Yii for their projects. The framework appeared in 2006 and continues to progress actively, indeed the Yii 2.0 framework was created in 2020. Most companies that choose Yii development work in the Information Technology and Computer Software industries and are located in the United states.
FAQ:
What is the Yii PHP framework?
Yii is an open-source high-performance PHP framework that works on MVC architecture. It is designed to build large-scale web applications rapidly. The name Yii is an acronym for “Yes It Is!”
What is the Yii framework used for?
The Yii PHP framework is designed for developing scalable web apps, eCommerce portals, or content management systems (CMS).
Is the Yii Framework good?
The Yii framework is a fast and secure framework designed to develop web apps. It is easy to understand and work with if you already have a solid knowledge of PHP. Apart from that, the Yii framework is easy to set up and has well-written documentation. Although Yii is not as popular as Laravel and some other PHP frameworks, it is a good option for web application development.
