A piece of software is only as good as its documentation. The Zend Framework team and a dozen or so contributors are working hard to improve the Zend Framework 2 documentation, but we still want you to help us improve it even more. Any kind of help is welcome and greatly appreciated.

Most of what they're looking for is clarity - they want to ensure that what's in the manual makes sense (and is correct for the release it relates to). They're also looking for feedback on what helps you learn best - tutorials, user guides, API docs, etc. Issues and suggestions should be posted to the issue tracker in github. If you're not sure where to start, check out the contributors guide.

I started 12 years ago designing websites. back then the fun and the complexity were playing with css, javascript and dhtml. [...] So right now i need some advice because im kind of lost facing so many possibilities. I want to learn the MVC approach, but i think that doing it by learning a different language (like ruby) will help me to increase my knowledge and being able to work with CI, Cake, Zend or Symphony more naturally. What should i focus first? web design tools? frameworks? mobile programming? NoSql databases?

Responses so far talk about things like using version control, even just in personal projects, the usefulness of Ajax/modern Javascript, more advanced CSS techniques, SOA and some framework suggestions to fill the MVC desire.

Do you have a recommendation on what'd be a "next good thing" to learn in the current web development world? Share it here!

Sometimes, then, improving your generic 'programming brain' will help you improve your facility with a particular language. At other times, it's more important to learn the nuances of a language, paying close attention to the kind of applications the language is used for. [...] For improving your PHP, then, you can do two things: become a better programmer; and understand PHP more finely, more deeply.

The three guides share a lot of the same concepts in common - naming conventions, separation of functionality, DRY (don't repeat yourself), testing code, etc.

Unit testing is becoming a fairly common element of software projects because of its promise of providing better quality to the code base. [...] This article is about improving your code quality in a sample project using Adobe Flash Builder 4 to build a rich user interface (UI) and connecting to PHP services via Zend Action Message Format (AMF). In this article, you learn how to write tests using two frameworks: FlexUnit and PHPUnit.

He starts with an overview of unit testing - why you should test your applications even though it might seem counterproductive and a description of what parts of your application the two testing tools (FlexUnit and PHPUnit) can help with. He first focuses is on the latter of the two and he shows how to get PHPUnit installed and write a first test on an example class. Following that, he moves over to the FlexUnit side and gives the same class and first test example. He then talks about running and automating the testing on both sides and even touches on things like continuous integration and code coverage results.

Lately I have been thinking about a few aspects of the information technology industry. Particularly, regarding software development, I am concerned that the following characteristics remain pervasive and detrimental to our industry: far too many software development projects ultimately fail, we tend to lack clear, rigorous standards and credentials that other industries typically employ, and our [lack of] adherence to ethics and professional conduct leaves much to be desired.

He addresses each of these, pointing out that a good number of IT environments have fallen into these issues and steps need to be taken to: reduce the failure rate of projects, hone down the staff to those that will turn out the best possible product and will uphold a good set of standards/ethics while they do.

If you're looking at performance and you want to get some quick wins, the obvious place to start is caching. Caching as a concept is focused exclusively around improving performance. [...] Fundamentally caching has one limitation - managing updates - and several decisions. In this article, we'll explore the basic options for caching and their impact on performance.

They talk about three different update methods - a synchronized update, lazy update and a read-through strategy (where the caching functionality itself can force a re-read of the original source). There's also a brief look at options to consider when caching data and how you're going to manage that cache once you've filled it with data.

In this video, I discuss how learning another programming language will make you a better PHP programmer. This may seem strange at first, but watch the video and you will see that I am not smoking anything...

He recommends learning something like Java or Actionscript or something that's not a match (ex. another web language) for what you're doing now. Something that's complementary would be even better. Thankfully, most languages share traits of others - common thought processes behind implementation and the like - so its simpler than you might think.

As I wrote earlier, several TestFest events will be held soon with the biggest one being the European TestFest initiative of quite a big bunch of European usergroups. But why should you attend such a TestFest?

Here's his four reasons:

• To improve PHP
• Improve your own knowledge
• To expand your network
• Because you're friggin cool!

You can find out more about TestFests in your area at this page on PHP's QA website.

I discovered a video presentation available from QCon SF 2008 by Neal Ford called 10 Ways to Improve Your Code. Although the examples are in Java, most of the presentation is relevant to PHP. There are some ideas here that I've never heard of myself, such as "anti-objects". Some of the main headings are a bit cryptic, so you may have to see the video itself to have them explained.

The list of ten ways includes things like test-driven development, good citizenship, the "single level of abstraction principle and anti-objects.

Here's the list:

• WP Security Scan
• Change all accounts that have known usernames (example: admin).
• Remove Wordpress Version
• adminSSL
• askApache Password protect
• Wordpress firewall

For each of the items that are plugins, links are provided for direct download and installation instructions.