There's always a lag behind new releases of PHP and releases of packages for operating systems such as Ubuntu. This lag time means that you could be kept from upgrading to the latest and greatest PHP for a year or more, unless you use an outside repository like Dotdeb. [...] Instead, I roll my own version of PHP. It's simple and easy to do, and something that any developer can do. Here's my instructions for doing so on a fresh Ubuntu installation.

He gives a reason or two why you might want to "roll your own" installation and helps you get the environment prepared via some "aptitude" install commands for supporting software. Commands are included for installing needed dependencies, configuring/building PHP and updating Apache to use this new install. He finishes it up with a few smaller things to do like making the php.ini and enabling the Zend opcode caching extension.

The PHP development team announces the immediate availability of PHP 5.4.15 and PHP 5.3.25. These releases fix about 10 bugs aswell as upgrading the bundled libmagic library. All users of PHP are encouraged to upgrade to PHP 5.4.15. [...] The list of changes are recorded in the ChangeLog.

Changes include updates to debug_backtrace for a segfault issue, a change to the dns_get_record function for negative length values and a fix for a fd leak on Solaris. You can download this latest release from the downloads section (source) or the Windows QA site (binaries).

The PHP development team announces the availability of the first release candidate of PHP 5.5. This release fixes some bugs as well as some possible leaks from our last beta. This is a development preview - do not use it in production!

Some of the more major changes in this release include an update to the FPM SAPI for QUERY_STRING, a fix for a build issue with libgd, bugs in SNMP and a problem with stream_select on Windows x64 systems. You can find the full list of changes in the NEWS file. Please download and test (Windows binaries here) this latest release to help the development team find issues and move along with the PHP 5.5.x releases.

The April issue is out and it's all about Security! We cover the gambit of topics including two-factor authentication, password hashing and securing file uploads. All our regular columns also appear, making this a jam-packed magazine full of PHP goodness.

Articles in this month's edition include:

• Securing File Uploads - Chris Tankersley
• Best Practices for Password Hashing in PHP - John Congdon
• Security-driven Development - Beth Tucker-Long
• When a Password Isn't Enough: Two-factor Authentication and You - Chris Stone

Check out the php|architect site for more info on picking up your own copy.

The PHP development team announces the release of the 4th beta of PHP 5.5.0. This release fixes some bugs against beta 3 and cleans up some features. This is a development preview - do not use it in production.

Several bugs were fixed and changes made - you can read the complete list in the NEWS file. To get this latest beta and try it out with your applications (and run the tests) you can download it here (here for Windows).

The PHP development team announces the release of the 3rd beta of PHP 5.5.0. This release fixes some bugs against beta 2. This is a development preview - do not use it in production. PHP 5.5.0beta3 is shipped with some bug fixes and improvements.

Updates include the dropping of bison <2.4 support, a fix for the DateTime serialize/unserialize and an update to the key handling in foreaches. You can see information on these changes and many more in the NEWS file and can download the beta release from the usual sources: source, Windows binaries.

The PHP development team announces the immediate availability of PHP 5.4.14 and PHP 5.3.24. These releases fix about 10 bugs aswell as upgrading the bundled PCRE library. All users of PHP are encouraged to upgrade to PHP 5.4.14.

Users are encouraged to update to this latest release. You can find the latest version either on the downloads page (source) or the Windows site (binaries). If you're curious what all changed in this release, check out the Changelog.

Without continuous refactoring, code maintainability and extensibility will start to decrease fast, even if it has tests. Until now, only IDEs contained functionality to perform automated refactorings. And then even only PHPStorm contains the most important refactorings such as "extract method". Today we release the PHP Refactoring Browser, a refactoring tool written completely in PHP. It is based on several outstanding open-source libraries.

The browser currently supports multiple refactoring methods including the extract method, renaming of local variables and converting a local variable to an instance. They include some example code and the result from the execution of the tool. The output shows where refactoring would work best with some color coding and formatting.

You can find more about this new tool over on its github repository.

• Building APIs in Zend Framework 2 (Chris Tankersley)
• Good API Design Is Not a Fairy Tale (Keith Casey)
• API Documentation and Testing with I/O Docs (Jason McCreary)
• Education Station: Fix Poorly Written Legacy Code with PHP-CS-Fixer (Matthew Setter)
• (Re)Introducing Magento: Configuration XML (Ben Marks)

You can pick up this single issue for about $5 USD or you can subscribe for a full 12 issues (PDF edition).

The PHP development team announces the release of the second beta of PHP 5.5.0. This release fixes some bugs from beta one that could prevent the release from compiling. [...] Our next beta is expected for April 11th.

This is a development preview, so do not use it in production. Several bugs were fixed in this beta release - you can view the NEWS file for a complete list. If you'd like to help test it out in your environment and with your applications, go download it (Winodws) and give it a shot. You can provide issues you might find back to the bug tracker.