What I needed in a framework was exactly what the author mentioned, something simple to start but could scale to complexity when needed. I tried a lot of other full stack frameworks and just couldn't get them to do really simple things without extensive customization. They were all very rigid in "how" you do things.

This is the reason I ended up writing my own micro-framework, Flight (http://flightphp.com/). The goal is to be as flexible and extensible as possible, while providing a tiny footprint.