When I started the Zend Framework project back in 2005 I was sure that we could make a difference. Some thought it was a long shot with too ambitious goals, after all I wanted to start from scratch without a single line of code, no community contributors and no corporate contributors. We are now 3.5 years later and I have to say Zend Framework's success has exceeded my own foresight and expectations.

He mentions the teams behind the Framework and some of Zend's partners that have helped to make it an amazing success.

Highlights in this month's edition include:

• PHP 5.2.6 is growing up fast, thanks to no PHP 5.3
• PHP 5 reaches 38.93% of PHP market share, up 2%
• They passed the mark of 30 millions domain tested this month

You can get the full stats (including the numbers and some great graphs) from the Nexen.net website - full stats, evolution stats.

Overall, the spread of PHP seems to have settled down this month to a more stable value. For this month, the number of domain using PHP came in at 19 million (19,404,533) and the number of IPs using PHP is at 1.3 million (1,319,743). This drop can be somewhat attributed to several hosts being made aware of the "expose_php" setting in their installations and turning it off for security reasons.

You can check out this month's numbers as well as how it relates to previous months (and years) in this graph.

A few days ago I was informed that the PHP 5 Power Programming book has now been downloaded over 1 million times. Exposure no doubt. And considering that there are about 4.5 million developers out there, it's safe to say that probably between 1 in 5 PHP developers have actually laid their hands on it (or should I say their computer screens on it).

Andi mentions also being happy to see this milestone crossed for many reasons, one of which that it's a sign of the PHP community maturing. To grab your copy, check out this page on phptr.com.

Chris cites both this News.com article and Zend's own press release on the topic:

The new funds will enable us to expand faster in emerging geographical markets, accelerate our product development and extend the services organization to meet the demands of our growing number of enterprise PHP customers.

He looks at it positively, noting that what's good for Zend is, ultimately, good for PHP - and this is very good for the company.

In breaking down the statistics for the period of December 2005 through January 2006, over 1.9 million domains are using PHP, and the number only continues to climb. In February, the upward trend continued and usage jumped up 1 million domains more. March, however, has only seen about 100,000 additional domains making the total 21,439,178. On the server side of things there's never much fluctuation and it still sits steady around the 1.3 million mark.

PHP usage took a hit in usage around the beginning of the year, but it's coming back quickly and will soon be back up to the 23 million domain usage soon.]]> Mon, 27 Mar 2006 07:57:31 -0600