Answer for: Do you use a web development framework or library? If so then which ones do you like?
#1 Roll your Own
To get a custom look and feel, I start with:
site style sheet for layout, backgrounds, and element attributes
file of PHP functions to generate menus and "button bars" from passed lists of labels and links
files of PHP functions to paginate content read from database or tab-delimited files
To add or edit content, just edit the data tables or files
Lean and mean, easy to "decorate" content with PHP
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I used to do this before I had more clients than time. Now I try to leverage the millions of man-hours of perfectly good code out there. I choose my battles by picking the closest fit and customizing to suit the job. I've accepted the reality that I never will build that perfect wheel.
Admittedly, when there is a big job, the "make or buy" decision usually leans in favor of adapting some "least objectionable" framework. When the job is small or I'm going for a rather straight-forward minimal-frills look and feel, it is often faster to adapt my own tried-and-true frameworks than decipher someone else's code or configure a template that has way more power than I need. I write pretty lean code, and I adapt a lot of examples from books, code snippets from the PHP docs. Web coding is still a fairly small part of the total workload here, so I suppose I *do* have more time than clients. Still, "bangs per buck" is the operational metric--we all use whatever tools we have to reduce overhead and cost to the customer.