With all that has been happening on the internet lately we hope you will listen to the podcast for the important subject matter, the various opinions given that do not always agree, and also because our own Elizabeth Naramore was part of the panel.

At 357 pages (375 including index), this book provides a thorough grounding in the key topics todays PHP developer should strive to know, and know well. The back cover ambitiously states that the book is “guaranteed to take your PHP skills to the next level”. Keep reading to find out whether or not I agree.

As one might expect from a book with three authors, writing styles vary from chapter to chapter which is no bad thing. I noticed the tone range from supportive and encouraging (OOP, Databases, Security, Q&A) through to a faster-paced more factual prose (Design Patterns, Automated Testing, Appendices). This actually worked out quite nicely as the variations were generally a good fit with the prevailing topic. Each chapter is divided into a wide range of subtopics, several of which include references to further reading resources. Code samples from the book can also be downloaded for your own tinkering pleasure.

The Preface squarely aims the book at intermediate level PHP developers: “those who have left their newbie status behind and are looking to advance their skills and knowledge.” I would place myself somewhere in the vicinity of this mid-range group and, as such, felt quite at home in some parts, more challenged in others. I discovered several completely brand new things, even in topic areas I rather smugly thought I knew quite well.

Despite the stated demographic, I think this book has a lot to offer novice developers. It would be a real challenge to properly digest and understand the wide range of topics covered, but an achievable and worthwhile one nonetheless. Prerequisites would include a steely-eyed perseverance and willingness to doggedly pursue further reading references. I for one would certainly have welcomed the opportunity to learn from this book in my fledgling months.

For me, the API chapter was the stand out star and, in my view, should be expanded into a book in its own right. The author skilfully made it feel easy and enjoyable to read, even though it was absolutely jam-packed full of brand-new concepts (for me at any rate) that would usually activate my fight or flight response. OOP, Databases, Performance and Quality Assurance were engaging yet relatively easy-going chapters. I found the Testing and Security chapters more challenging to *properly* understand on first pass. I had to really stop and think in places to make sure I understood some of the code examples (Testing) and attack vectors (Security).

Every single chapter delivered something new for me. I particularly appreciated the occasional ‘rule of thumb’ provided here and there, my favourite being how to identify methods that should be declared static (OOP, page 7). For me, this sort of tip is priceless and will stick with me for years to come (much like the old adage from school ‘i before e except after c’).

PHP Master has provided me with a more solid and up-to-date foundation of knowledge on which to base my future experience. But has it improved my skills as a developer? It’s hard to say at this point. I think skills improve through a combination of education and experience. With that in mind, the book delivers the first 50% – the rest is down to me.

If you’re still undecided, my advice is buy the book – you won’t regret it.

Day 1

So on Friday morning the first day of the conference started and it started with one of the best keynotes I have ever seen! Aral Balkan talked about User Experience. The talk was full of anekdotes and really inspirational. After that I attended the “TDD and getting paid” talk by Rowan Merewood. I had seen him speaking before and he is a great speaker with a lot of knowledge. Although I know quite a bit about TDD and Unittesting, the talk had a practical approach which was very interesting. The second talk of the day was about IPv6. It was a bit too technical for me and it somehow didn’t get my attention. After that it was already time for lunch.

After lunch I attended the Uncon. Last year was the first year there was an Uncon at DPC. I didn’t attend it back then, but this year the Uncon had some really interesting talks and I attended three of them during the two conference days. This talk was about the internals of DocBlox. DocBlox is a new tool, written by Mike van Riel, to replace phpDocumentor. It was interesting to see how he managed to reduce the amount of memory and time needed to generate the API documentation of a project. He even build his own Reflection API using the PHP tokenizer. Too bad the talk was only 45 minutes, because I would have liked to see more of it. Because it’s opensource I still can ofcourse, if I ever find the time. So then it was time for a talk by Stephan Höchdorfer about external depency management. It wasn’t quite what I expected unfortunately. After the break I decided to skip a session because I was really tired and the “hallway track” was also great, just talking to friends and relaxing. By then it was time for the last session of the day. It was a hard choice between Advanced OO Patterns and HTML5 for PHP developers. Since we are doing HTML5 at our company at the moment I decided for the HTML5 talk by Thorsten Rinne. It was an interesting overview of the new HTML5 functionality. So it was a really interesting first day of the conference.

Like every year there was a social organised and sponsored by Ibuildings, Github and Sanoma Media. In my opinion the place was too crowded and the music was too loud to actually have a conversation. So by the time I arrived most of the speakers and friends I wanted to speak to already moved to another bar right around the corner. We had a great evening and I made some new friends too. By the time I got to bed it was really late, so I forgot to set my alarm clock. I did wake up in time, but I was still really tired so I decided to skip the keynote about API’s by Helgi. Apparently it was a great keynote, at least that’s what everyone told me.

Day 2

For me day two of the conference started with the presentation from Jouzas Kaziukenas about the new era of PHP frameworks. It was an interesting overview of the history and future of PHP frameworks. The two most used PHP frameworks are both working on a new major version which is PHP 5.3 only. If you missed the talk and still want to see it, you can at PfCongres in Utrecht, The Netherlands on September 17^th. Next session was again an Uncon session for me about documentation. It sounded really interesting but somehow it didn’t get of the ground really well. At the end I finally managed to find out the talk was about Docbook, which sounded really interesting, but it was just too bad that the speaker didn’t get in the flow of the presentation so the story was a bit lost. I think Docbook is interesting and I certainly will look into it to see if we can use it at the company I work for. And then it was time for lunch again.

The talk I attended after lunch was by Ligaya Turmelle and Raymond DeRoo. They talked about Character sets in MySQL. Basically they said: Use Latin1 if you can, otherwise use UTF8. I asked them afterwards some advice for our own database since we are using utf8 and latin1. They confirmed what we already thought at the company that we should be using UTF8 only. Only because our application is international and we need to support different character sets. So thanks for the advice guys, luckily we were on the right track already! By then it was time for my last Uncon session about the PHP build tool Phing. I already knew about Phing because it comes with the database deployment system DbDeploy. I talked to the lead developer of Phing about changing the way DbDeploy works to fit our needs and got some great inspiration to change this (backwards compatible ofcourse) to fit our needs and hopefully the needs of more people looking for a database deployment system. After a short break it was time for the closing keynote from Cal Evans about Open Teams. I had already seen this keynote at the PHPBenelux conference in January, but it was very entertaining and good stuff to repeat from time to time.

And after the closing by Harrie Verveer DPC was over already. I had a great time, met old friends and made new friends and got new inspiration to last for at least a couple of months untill the next conference. DPC was awesome like it is every year!

I bring this up *not just* because it will be a great conference on a subject that is “the holy grail for many developers” – Telecommuting, but also because it will again have 2 of our members in the 5 speaker lineup – Ligaya Turmelle and Lorna Jane Mitchell.

This time around Lorna Jane Mitchell will be speaking on “Could You Telecommute?” She will “take a look at what can make or break your remote working experience, and some ideas for coping when the reality doesn’t live up to the promises.” Ligaya Turmelle will be speaking on the “Work/Life Balance” She will discuss how she handles the work/life balance and the tools she uses.

For additional information on what is covered in this DC4D be sure to take a peek at the schedule. To just learn a bit more about the conference check out daycamp4developers.com or follow them on twitter.

If you are interested, there are a number of ticket options available here. There is the attendee/video option is only $35 USD! If you have a group of people that want to attend you also have the “office party” option for only $100 USD.

Liz gives a talk entitled “Technical Writing”, and Lorna’s talk is “Open Source Your Career”. You can take a look at the list of sessions to see what else is included but the line-up is fantastic. The emphasis of the day is on giving developers the soft skills they need to express their technical excellence to other people, including non-developers. As such it’s a great fit for anyone looking to grow themselves and their soft skills to the next level. Read more about the event on the site daycamp4developers.com, follow them on twitter, and buy your tickets here.

The event is November 6th, and all the sessions are recorded and can be accessed afterwards if you have a ticket so even if you can’t make it on the day, it’s worth it. The price is also very reasonable at $35! If you are attending then post a comment, would be great to know who else is joining in

PHPWomen has launched a partnership program for open source projects that are committed to embracing diversity and providing a welcoming and friendly atmosphere for contributors. We work closely with project leaders to identify specific areas of need, and will actively encourage our members to participate by promoting those needs through various channels. In return, the project leaders will ensure that newcomers to their projects will be welcomed and their contributions appreciated. This includes fostering an open and friendly environment for all newcomers, not just females.

Basically the goals of the Partnership Program are as follows:

• Highlight open source projects that have an open, friendly and welcoming community surrounding them
• Actively encourage anyone that is considering contributing to a project to participate by giving them specific details and letting them know what’s out there
• Improve diversity in open source by focusing efforts on open communities and notifying our members of opportunities
• Provide assistance to open source projects that are desperately in need of volunteers

We are so proud to announce that we have many projects already signed up for our partnership program, several of which have fantastic Statements of Diversity clearly displayed on their websites. These are all projects that value respectful communities and can be considered a safe environment for contributors. In other words, as a newcomer to their community, you won’t be harassed by a bunch of jerks, and your contributions will be valued.

For a complete list of our Open Source Project Partners, or to learn more about how the PHPWomen Partnership Program works, you can visit our OS Partnership Page.  If you are interested in volunteering your time and energy in one of these fantastic projects, check out the OS Project Opportunity page. We will keep this page updated as often as possible, so we encourage you to visit it regularly.

And of course, if you are a Project Leader for an Open Source project, and you are interested in partnering with us, by all means contact me! We would love to tell our members all about your awesomeness. (elizabeth.at.naramore.dot.net.)

The PHP UK Conference is now in its fifth year and is bigger and better than ever. Friday’s event has 16 different hour-long talks covering a plethora of topics from some of the world’s best PHP speakers. It takes place at the modern Business Design Centre in London’s bustling Islington area, close to Kings Cross and Euston and just two minutes walk from Angel underground station.

PHPWomen is a community partner of the event and will have a stand in the exhibition hall amongst a variety of other exhibitors. We also have two of our members speaking at the conference; Juliette Folmer who will be giving her talk “Regex-fu” and Lorna Mitchell will be talking about “Best practices in web service design“.

Finally we are also pleased to be able to offer all our members a discount on the event registration price. Head over to http://www.phpconference.co.uk/registration/phpwomen to receive a £20 discount on the cost that covers the main conference, as well as including a buffet lunch and dessert, refreshments throughout the day, cloakroom facilities, access to discounted books from O’Reilly and Packt publishers, countless networking opportunities, and a raffle with over 50 prizes on offer.

As usual there are social events arranged for both the evenings before and straight after the event – the former being free to anyone to come along and the latter starting with a sponsored bar by Facebook.

We hope to see you there on Friday!

For much more information please browse the rest of the PHP UK Conference site.

Come rub elbows with technology’s finest, as we unite diverse skills and interests, recognized industry professionals, IT managers, authors, speakers, and the business community that we’re all a part of.

Business casual attire is required.

Space is limited – RSVP is mandatory

The party is on December 21 at 7pm. For location information and more details, please visit  http://www.bootup.io/holiday-party/.

The calendars are available to buy on Zazzle, and can be ordered in a selection of sizes (Zazzle have local domains around the world; check where to ship yours from). 10% of every purchase goes to PHPWomen to enable us to use those funds to support the group and our members next year. Our gracious thanks go to our friend and booth babe Derick Rethans, who photographed us so beautifully (despite our diva moments!) and created the calendar products for you to buy – Derick, you rock

So – go forth and purchase! Surely there’s someone in your life who needs this calendar! Or maybe you’d like one for yourself …?