Inwas wondering if Yii has the ability to have plugins installed like WP, modx or Drupal from the admin?
Essentially allowing the admin check for updates and install modules/plugins on the fly.
Select available module >> download >> install >> setup >> play
If not, is there a opensource project that already does this?
There’s no built-in support for that, you have to develop this feature yourself for your application.
Yii framework allows you to create a very wide range of different applications and it’s practically impossible to design a plugin system that is compatible with all possible Yii apps and fits everyone’s needs.
I’m not trying to match any of yii’s apps but rather create an Eco-system around my app.
Hmm, looks like I should have been clearer. Ouch!
Let’s just say I want to make a WP clone with the same ability to install “mods” from the admin panel.
What do I need to look for in Yii’s framework to do this?
can you be more clear?
i cant understand what you ask for
you want to make WP clone with YII?
if so, than its not something that you ask for in a forum and someone will tell you "do that and that and you got a WP clone"
for the start i will say start looking in the WP code and see how they do that
and if you get stuck on something than ask
First learn how to develop with Yii and then you can answer your question. Secondly, don’t compare WP with Yii which is a PHP framework, WP which is a CMS built in PHP.
Modules and theming can be good starting points but you have to implement the whole plugin management system from scratch. There are no built-in tools or extensions for that, AFAIK.
Phtamas, thank you that is going be a good start for me. And basically that seems to be what I needed to hear.
Others, thanks for the comments!
Just to clear this up:
Yii is a framework which would allow you to build WP, phpbb or whatever. A framework is just really a set of libraries that help you instead of redoing everything for the beginning again.
So you are right comparing Yii to WP is impossible. Comparing Yii to drupal is also not correct. However comparing to symfony, CI, fuel, lithium or cakephp is possible. But I would not compare Yii to silex or any other "lite" framework because they server different purposes and the amount is loaded for you is completely different.
Because Yii is a framework it also has made decisions for you which sometimes are just awesome and sometimes will suck! It is all a trade off.
You should just learn it! And then you’ll understand how to answer the questions yourself.
Imagine if your teachers at school told you that 
Imagine if a store told you to study all the specs before you before you bought your next pc 
Sometimes it is just easier to ask questions than to spend a lot of time googling. I googled a lot before I posted my question, I spent time looking first but if you are not familar to a projects "terminology" then it really is hard to know what you are looking for.
Module, extension, plugin, widget, snippet, and what not can mean different things to different projects. If you don’t ask how can you learn?
I came here because I want to port my 16mb MVC project to a heavier framework. sF2 or zend are my only other choices. All the other frameworks don’t really compare to Yii, sF2 or zend. Although Yii is slightly lighter thand sF2 or zend I am thinking that with Yii2 that I’ll be able to have the best of both worlds.
Has anybody come across a Yii project that has imemented plugins like WP does?