PHP developers have been excited about Symfony2's potential to grow a well-organized and smoothly interlocking ecosystem for some time. The framework is solid, and, notes Fabien Potencier, designed to facilitate third-party app development for as much functionality as possible.

If you're using Symfony2, you already know that the framework uses 'bundles', the equivalent of plugins, if the core counted as a plugin too. (The official documentation calls bundles 'first-class citizens' in Symfony2.)

So far so great idea, but an ecosystem depends on a community, and a community needs some kind of organization. So how is the Symfony2 bundle community organized, and how do you find existing third-party bundles?

To help speed your search, here are two Symfony2 bundle sites:

• KnpBundles: the larger of the two sites, with clearly-displayed scores and recommendations for each of the (presently 913) bundles. (Scores are distinguished from recommendations because scores describe aggregate value judgment, while recommendations demonstrate a one-to-one connection between developer and bundle.) Check out the top ranked and recommended bundles here.
• Symfony2 Bundles on Symfohub: a much smaller set of bundles (171), with ratings features but much lower community involvement. If the community does pick up, though, the Symfohub site has a nice filtering system, which should make finding bundles generally useful to you (even if you don't quite know what keywords to search).

In other words, KnpBundles is probably better as a first stop for its stronger community, but Symfohub's interface offers more options. Consider both if you're poking around for good Symfony2 bundles.