I'm reminded of an MVC microframework I put together many years back in PHP: https://github.com/Two9A/BirSaat

Having pulled down a copy just now, the framework itself is 526 lines of PHP, and the sample site (a newsfeed that pulls from the BBC) is perhaps 300 lines in models and controllers. I use the framework to this day to serve out my blog and other small sites, seems to work well without getting in the way.