Choose framework

Im thinking about starting a website project with a framework that will be also a study project for me. To be more exact a biologist kinda site with quite some filters and there is the question also if I should use separate database or flat file for 8 translations for the different species names (the site also has to be international, but just with 3-4 languages). Im thinking hard about which road to take... so I am asking for some constructive inputs please!

Im thinking of yii because of its simplicity, I tried it and it seems to be working smoothly.
Im thinking of symfony2 because it seems to be more advanced and some great websites were built with it, also drupal8 was constructed with it if Im not mistaken... and even if its harder to get going with it if its worth the effort I would do it.
Im thinking of spark, a java mini framework or Eclipse Link as later I plan to make an offline version of this webpage and I hope its not that hard to port it as a standalone java app. But I'm novice in java and hate the java documentations filled with acronyms all the time and supposing that I know those essential steps that are considered to be self evident by experienced java programmers.

Solution

I think there is no correct answer to your question. Chosing a framework is a matter of philosophy, and personal preferences. Some people will think that Yii is easier to use and some other will be amazed by symfony capabilities.

If you know a framework, I'll advise you to stick to this one and if you don't check out the basis of each ones and choose the one that seems to fit your need the most.

But at the end if you choose a popular framework (Yii, Symfony, Laravel, ...) you'll be able to achieve your goal.