PHP Training is an integral part of our PHP community and there are a lot of folks providing great training services making the PHP community safer and stronger. ServerGrove has long supported PHP education by sponsoring PHP User Groups and PHP Conferences, but we realised we have overlooked professional trainers. That is why we are pleased to announce our PHP Education Initiative.

Their part in the project is to provide resources (individual VPSes) for each of the individuals involved to give them a solid platform to work from. It's available to students, educator or user group leader involved in a PHP-centric training session. For more information on getting access to this resource, check out the post for contact information and what will be included.

Since Engine Yard was formed, we've had a deep commitment to supporting the open source community. [...] What was missing, though, was a more organized way to reach out to PHP User Groups to offer our support. We didn't really have a consistent way to connect with user group leaders. That's why we're starting a PHP User Group Program.

User group leaders that sign up will get a monthly email describing the benefits available to your group, a list of upcoming events or conferences your attendees might be interested in as well as information on getting occasional swag/sponsorship for your group.

We'll also be highlighting a PHP User Group of the month, which will entail a blog post about your group, a visit from us and some extra special goodies for your members.

If you're a user group leader, you can get involved by signing up here and you'll be notified when you've been added.

Today i was reading upon this wonderful article about writing a trace-route program in Python in 40 lines. Even though trace-route is one of the many tools i use on day to day basis, i never really got into writing a version myself (something I like to do just to gain knowledge how things works). So when I was reading this post, i thought, Python is nice, but is it possible to do it in PHP as well? The answer to that: yes and no..

His post introduces you to "traceroute" (including a bit on how it works) in case you're either not a unix user or haven't gone much past some of the basics of the operating system type. One issues he butted up against was problems with the socket extension in PHP and inconsistencies with the underlying connection types. Another is the limitation of the tool only working as the root superuser. He includes the actual code and some sample output if you'd like to try it for yourself.

The program is intended to benefit all the parties involved; primarily, Zend gets a showcase for its products in an environment of dedicated PHP programmers like the ones in PHP user groups. In exchange, the group members obtain a discount on their purchases via a group-specific coupon code.

Some user groups are seeing it as a good thing, a way to provide the things Zend has to offer (software, training...anything on the Zend store really) for a discounted price. Others, however, see it has an unwelcome way Zend has tried to worm their way into local groups.

As quoted from the information page about the partnerships:

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.

The goal of the project is to encourage inviting environments for open source projects where developers feel like they're given a chance to contribute equally and to provide something more specific than "here's a project that needs help - go for it".

There's already several projects that are on the list including Spaz and the PHP Documentation team. You can find out more specifics on what they're looking for in contributions on the Opportunities page.

It pos­si­ble to pur­chase a full - ex­pe­ri­ence TEK·X tick­et'"valid for both the main con­fer­ence and tu­to­ri­al day - for $650. The catch (if you want to call it that) is that the spe­cial is only valid until we an­nounce the sched­ule. [...] The rea­son­ing be­hing the Char­ter Pro­gram is very sim­ple: we rec­og­nize that there is a core of at­ten­dees for whom our con­fer­ences have be­come an op­por­tu­ni­ty to meet up with their peers and learn what's hap­pen­ing in the PHP world.

This Charter Program was created just for those people, the ones that are there regardless of what the conference itself has to offer but are confident that they'll be in for a good even no matter what. For them it's not just about the sessions, it's about the people they'll meet and friends they'll see again.

Building a web site that will be seated on a multi-lingual platform often requires developing an IP-to-country application that permits you to map users' IP addresses to their corresponding countries. [...] This database contains over 82,0000 records and allows you to map more than 3,200,000 IP addresses to their respective countries. This can be really handy for developing different IP-to-country applications with minor efforts.

The review the previous article on making the database and move ahead to create a script that selects - based off the IP range - the country that address could be from.

You'll be happy to know that were already working on many of your suggestions, Greg's post on the subject has some more details. I'll be sharing everyones comments with the rest of the PEAR group at our meeting on the 13th, so if anyone has a suggestion they haven't submitted yet thats your deadline.

The thing he's most excited about is the new mentoring program that will introduce new developers to the PEAR-ality of it all and get them involved with both the coding and the community.

In this second part of a two-part article, you'll learn how to manage email headers when creating a PHP email program, attach a file to a message, and more.

In this part they cover some of the details about the structure of emails, how to add an attachment to an email (for both a normal file and images for an HTML email), as well as a mention of how email is delivered.

In a blog post yesterday, CMS expert and Optarian Seth Gottlieb wonders about the eZ partner program.

Gottlieb made comments about it seeming to be a good system, but not quite understanding how it would work when applied. Zak comes back with comments on the reasoning behind the program, how it works to benefit the partner, and how they see those partners, both in giving credit and their involvement with the projects.

For more information on the eZ partner program, check out this page on the eZ website.