Though, if you consider ZF overkill – that should be no problem, as it is written very modular so you should be able to use most components separately.

That’s the case with most frameworks, you take the bits and pieces you need and the rest is discarded in the production version.

Of course, this process might be more complex for each different framework.

If I were to look for alternatives for ZF CakePHP would have been the first framework I’d look at (well, basically because I’ve already looked at Symfony).

Though, if you consider ZF overkill – that should be no problem, as it is written very modular so you should be able to use most components separately.

I suggest you check out CakePHP, which is also modeled after RUby on Rails. Symfony on the other end has too much stuff you’ll never need. I think CakePHP is just right. It also has everything you mentioned Symfony has.

I actually think Symfony was created as the PHP equivalent of RoR… but who knows.

What I do dislike about the Zend Framework, however, is the amount of documentation available: almost nothing. And the official documentation is off line most of the time.