We’ve announced out first summit, which is all about DevOps.Visit the newly launched website for the summits to learn more and keep track of future offerings:  http://summits.phparch.com/

Taking his direction further, I simplified the whole image (logo, fonts and colors) to a more colorful and less cluttered version. I also decided to unify the brand across all product lines, including the magazine, websites, books, summits and conferences. I’m using the lessons learned from UX design in usability, that the interface should never get in the way of the content. In designing for content, design should be there to enhance the communication of message, not be the message.

Broad fields of color will be used as headers, covers and intro pages. Use of white space will be liberal, giving the eye needed rest (reading commentary and scouring code samples).  For the central font, I chose to bring Gibson over from our mojoLive past. It’s a sans-serif font that can be used to convey elegance and authority as well as quirkiness.

The tech sector has been buzzing this week about Apple’s new-found embracing of minimalism. It’s not strange, as many of us tech-minded designers tend to follow the Bauhaus ethos of “form follows function” and “less is more.” Whether or not it was a good move for Apple, it’s a good move for php[architect].

php|architect is now php[architect]

php[architect] is part of our “unification of message.” We will have php[books], php[summits], php[tek], and others to come. Does this mean we want to imply that we are PHP? No, but we do want to imply PHP encompasses us and everything we do. Whatever we produce, it will be wrapped in PHP

We have just started this process of gradual update, starting with the magazine and now including the website(s). Soon to follow are the books (as the are released) and the conferences.

I look forward to hearing your critical input as we continue through this process. I suspect some changes would be welcomed more than others, and I hope that you would let us know when something “isn’t right.”

Also last month we experimented with returning to a vertical format and asked your opinions on it! Well we are happy to say that the feedback was enormously positive, and therefore we will be staying with the vertical format for the future.

So come check out the May 2013 issue of php|architect.

This also marks an experiment for us, returning to portrait (vertical) format based upon feedback we’ve received from our readers.  We’d love to hear from you as well, whether you are a current subscriber or not.  Come take our 30-second two question survey to let us know which you prefer, portrait or landscape for your magazine: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/phpa-format

Community is the focus of the February issue. To help you get started, we explore why you should get involved and highlight how it can change your life. Andrew Podner explores ways you can contribute to an open source project both with code and otherwise, anchored by his experiences contribution to CodeIgniter. In “A Tale of an ElePHPant Herd”, Rafael Dohms shares how the community has shaped his life for the better at different points. Lonnie Brown shares why should get involved and how his own involvement rejuvenated him. The business case for contributing to Open Source is made by Stefan Koopmanschap, who highlights how it can help your bottom line.

We get a candid behind the scenes look at what it takes to put on a conference by Ross Tuck from Ibuilding, the organizers of the Dutch PHP Conference (DPC). When you’re at your next conference, Matthew Davis’s “Hackathons: 5 Steps to Awesome Sauce” will help you make the most of participating in a hackathon. Both Chris Stone and John Congdon share what they’ve learned running the Baltimore and San Diego PHP user groups, respectively.

Bart McLeod continues his adventures with Zend Framework 2. In this month’s “Bug Zapper” column, he looks at fixing an issue in the Zend\Form\Form component.  Along the way, you’ll learn how to work with this important component.Bart McLeod fixes a bug in the ZF2 documentation. You can follow along as he evaluates the bug, tests, and then submits a pull request for his fix in “Fix the Manual”. Matthew Setter’s “Education Station” shows you how to tame your CSS using lessphp, a tool for treating CSS in a programmatic fashion.

Beth? Oh, she’s at yet another conference. In the Editorial, she shares how she’s getting more involved in her local user group and advises everyone to find some way to get involved with the PHP community.

Finally{}, Eli shares his advice on what to do when you inherit a code base, and why you need to resist the urge to “Rewrite All the Things!”

• Essential PHP
• SugarCRM PHP Essentials
• SugarCRM Developer Basics
• SugarCRM Developer Advanced

Each is offered as an online, instructor-led course. We keep the class sizes small so that all students get plenty of personal attention from our instructors. For more information about specific courses, check out the full schedule.

To help highlight some tips and tools to ease your “in-code-sistencies”, we explore code standards and testing in the January issue of php|architect magazine. Read in Andrew Podner’s “Coding Conventions” how, as we share and commit code, standards matter more and more every day.  Once the code is written, it’s important to make sure everything is working correctly. So, while it takes a little more time up front, writing tests will ultimately save you time in debugging. Learn about this as well as tools that can help you make testing easier in “Testing in PHP” by Jeff Carouth. Development isn’t just about good code and efficient tests, learn about the benefits of properly documenting your code – going beyond just commenting – in Chris Tankersley’s “Properly Documenting Your Code”.

In our “Bug Zapper” column, Bart McLeod fixes a bug in the ZF2 documentation. You can follow along as he evaluates the bug, tests, and then submits a pull request for his fix in “Fix the Manual”. We welcome Ben Marks this month with his article “(Re)introducing Magento”, the first in his new series “Shop Talk”, which will explore the world of Magento. Veteran columnist, Matthew Setter, also starts a new column this month titled “Education Station”. This column will introduce new apps, plug-ins, libraries, and contributions to the PHP world. First up is php-markdown, making your markup a snap.

Beth? Oh, she’s off to another conference. In the Editorial, she talks about her recent bout of “Conference Fever”.

Finally{}, Eli talks about php|architect’s new beginnings under the reigns of Musketeers.me.

In the meantime, our Early Bird registration sale is running!  Sign up now and save up to $500 off the cost of the conference.