The people at Packt Publishing just sent me a free sample chapter (in PDF format) of their latest PHP book (PHP5 CMS Framework Development) for me to pass on to you guys.

The sample chapter looks at access control in a CMS application. Stefan also includes a brief outline of the contents of the remainder of the book. Other chapters cover topics like decreasing code bloat, security, specialized handlers and localization.

New developers need quite a time to familiarize themselves with the rules and conventions in PEAR. With the new role of mentors in PEAR2, they will have a contact person they can ask in that cases. But in many cases the same questions will get asked which will get boring for the mentoring developer, so we need a Mini-FAQ with a list of things the newbie should know.

They're looking for comments posted to the entry to help define this guide. So far, a suggested outline has been proposed by David Coallier for both general information and developer-specific details.

It's a good summary of what the talk was about, and provides a few bits that weren't covered in the slides. If you're looking for a good place to start with researching PDO and its associated technologies, her list is a good place to start.

Each heading is accompanied by at least three points, clearly written as to include the most information. Some examples of the topics covered include: "Why PDO?", "Persistent Connections", "Prepared Statements", and "Retrieving information using PDO".