I am currently working on a project documentation site for an OSS PHP project. Presently all of the docs are written in Markdown and stored as separate files.
I would really like to keep the core documentation as static files within the project so that they can be downloaded and used as well as read on my website. But on the website, I’d like to render those pages from within a CMS.
In addition to presenting the code docs, I also want to provide a forum for discussion and a blog.
WordPress is what I have experience with, but is there a better system for what I am trying to accomplish specifically?
For Blog and CMS I would suggest stick with WordPress since you already have experience on it. And as far as Forum is concerned I would suggest SimplePress forum. I have been using it on my WordPress installation and found it really good. You can see live forum on the link above to see how it looks in real world.
Also WordPress has several nice plugins like Download Manager that will give you ability to manage your downloads/files.
Can’t confirm if wp is the best, but it’s certainly good enough.
To include your docs, you’ll have to write a plugin, not likely that you will find one existing that does exactly what you want.
For forum, you should find a plugin. Google for posts similar to this to choose a best match.
Firstly WordPress isn’t a framework.
I believe CakePHP has the functionality to load hardcoded pages when they’re placed in the webroot folder of the app. I’m unsure as to how they’re loaded in regards to routing/templating however.