The Ushahidi 3.x web application is written in the php programming language, using the Kohana version 3.3 framework as a backend, with a Backbone.js and Javascript frontend over a SQL (currently MySQL) database (see Code Organisation for more details on this).

Kohana is a Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework, where a framework is like a structure that you can build your code on, that handles lots of otherwise time-consuming things like making all your pages have a similar look-and-feel. MVC gets its name because it splits application code into Model, View and Controller files.  Simply put (there are some complications to this, but not enough to change the basic explanation), Model files contain code that describes the data structures being used by the application;  View files contain code that tell the framework how to display information to the user;  and controller files contain code that converts system inputs (e.g. you clicking a mouse or data coming into a feed) into actions.