PHP object or an array

Question

I am writing an app that allows users to modify and change some of their site settings. I am just constructing a form generator that will send various options to variuous plugins to generate the code what I am wondering is whether I should be using objects for this rather than multidimensional arrays? If so how would I change my code?

So right now I have made this- its very long and going to get longer so I have only pasted part of it for the sake of brevity:-

$scopeSettings = array(
    'site_background' => array(
        'subpanels' => array(
            'colour' => array(
                'plugins' => array(
                    'colourchooser' => array(
                        'tip' => "The background colour appears underneath the 'Background Image' (if set)-hover over the '?' around the colour chooser for extra tips on how to use it",
                        'element' => 'body',
                        'gradientenabled' => 'true',
                        'opts' => array (
                            'closed' => 'true',
                            'advanced' => array(
                                'tip' => "You can paste in your own generated gradient codes in here",
                                'checkbox' => true
                            )//end advanced
                        )//end Opts
                    )//end colour chooser
                )//end plugins
            ),//end colour sub panel
            'pattern' => array(
                'plugins' => array(
                    'patternselector' => array(
                        'tip' => "Use the pattern selector to apply effects like moire or scan lines to your background image",
                        'element' => 'patimg'
                    )//end patternselector
                )//end plugins
            ),//end pattern sub panel
        )//end subpanels
    )//end site background
);//end scope settings

What would be best practice with this sort of thing?

Answer 1

Maybe this is a stupidity, but you can use "YAML" or "JSON" as configuration format for an application no?

As for example Symfony or other framework.