For blog variants I have mostly used Drupal and I have a couple of blogs using Wordpress. Don't underestimate the power of both of them and that is one reason why I am still sticking with PHP for the forseeable future. I can attach a Wordpress installation to a CodeIgniter framework and with very little additional work, I can have a blog working - albeit with ugly code! After all wordpress is only 10 tables, Drupal is about 50.
I'm about to start a new project, and thought I'd settled on CI as my framework of choice (never coded w/ a framework, so trying to get it 'right' on my first try), but some of the comments I've read here and elsewhere have me second-guessing my choice.
CI is just not updated enough IMO to form the stable base for an app.
As for taking it beyond blog content - I've created all sorts of complex sites; for example featured realtor website (property search, user management etc.) a wiki/"stackoverflow similar" site and am also working on a twitter "ticket" and marketing site (which is pretty complex). So it is suited to stuff like that.
Accessibility, features, technology (i.e. is it up to date with the latest language features), development (looking for highly active development)
Was your ultimate choice made simply because the framework was the defacto in your language of choice?
No. However I did reject some other language frameworks because of having ot learn the specifics as well (RoR for example).
Assuming you're sufficiently experienced in framework X now, what are your regrets? What makes the other frameworks look like greener grass?
Most of the regrets are about the development. I chose KohanaPHP which is a solid framework - and but of a power user one (lowish documentation but very powerful once you get to grips). The problem is that they scrap revisions so easily - version 2 is ending it's lif cycle after a very short time frame and V3 is a complete rewrite using HMVC ideals (as opposed to MVC). Porting to V3 is something of a pain (mostly Im not going to bother while V2 still suits my needs). There are also outstanding bugs in the v2 framework that need ironing out and it's looking like they might not all be done.
Also there is sometimes a tendancy for it to bottle neck on some PHP versions / installations - I have not yet tracked down why but it is concerning me more and more.
If you could start your project over again, would you chose the framework again?
Yes I think so. I started on Code Igniter and Kohana was a more actively developed fork of that (later fully rewritten) so I was versed in the syntax and so forth.
It is a powerful framework.
Did you choose framework X secretly because you just wanted to learn it? In other words, was it attractive to you just because all the cool kids were doing it and you wanted to add it to your toolbox? Be honest.
Honestly - no. I used Code Igniter after a recommendation from someone. After finding it frustrated I heard from a forum post about Kohana and how it got rid of those bugs - and it did. At the time the cool kids were going with RoR - their website instantly turned me off at the time so I never bothered.