Dear PHP Community, we need to have a talk about the insufferable state of your software stacks. It was recently brought to my attention that there is software out there, software we use every day!, that is NOT written in PHP. This is completely unacceptable! We are PHPeople! We're not "Web" Developers, we are the web. And we sure as hell are not some fancy "Software Developer", you can ask anyone on the internet! Seriously: If it's not PHP how will we ever be able to extend and adapt it to our needs! We are slaves of our tools!

He mentions several tools that, yes, while not written in PHP are very useful to just about any developer out there (including git, Puppet and Apache). But, more seriously:

PHP is a language that enables absolute beginners to start creating on the web using FTP and notepad! It let's us realize and validate our ideas blazingly fast and allows us to adapt our successful ideas to beautifully scale with our requirements providing and relying on solid, battle-proof tools.

A few weeks ago I was sparked into a twitter conversation with Larry Garfield (@Crell) about the value of comments in code. [...] A pretty innocuous comment [about code that doesn't have comments] that is quite insightful. [...] That led to an interesting discussion that just couldn't fit on twitter. So let me explain...

He defines what he means by "comments" (DocBlock, general comments and legal information) and what sort of things should be inside of them. He also points out a few things not to do in you comments including being overly descriptive and restating what the code is doing (they should be less about that and more about the "Why"). Of course, there's exceptions and he touches on those briefly to finish out the post.

So we all know that the internet is full of frameworks. They've been the popular thing for the last 5 or 6 years and it seems to have become the "barrier for entry" or the "passage of rights" that 8 or 9 years ago used to be "hey I just wrote a phpBB clone!". There are plenty around but in this day in age, why would anyone write a new one? As somebody involved in a new PHP framework - Fuel - that has shaken a few opinions up I thought it would be interesting to share my thoughts and views on the situation.

While he agrees that there are plenty of other frameworks out there, maybe too many to choose from, he thinks that there's value in making something that's useful to you and the toolsets you're already used to. One of their goals with Fuel is to "make PHP as fun to use" as possible and things like built-in migrations and scaffolding (along with a command-line tool, Oil) help towards that goal.

A framework is essentially a way to put all of your best practises into a single place so that you can reuse them over and over again. This should make you more efficient and make your time more financially viable to clients. If the framework you use slows you down or does not cater for the way you like to develop then sack it off and do your own thing.

Having the right code snippet at the right time can definitely be a life saver for web developers. Today, I've compiled 10 really awesome PHP code snippets that will, I hope, be very helpful in your forthcomming developments.

Their list of ten includes bits of code for:

• Super simple page caching (file-based)
• Convert seconds to time (years, months, days, hours...)
• Get current weather using Google API
• Get latitude and longitude from an address
• Save url to PDF

PHP developers also have another community-driven treasure trove at their disposal, one which is host to almost 600 high-quality libraries yet never seems to garner the attention it deserves. I'm referring to the PHP Extension and Application Repository, better known as PEAR, and in this article I'll try to shine the spotlight just a bit brighter on this fantastic community resource by highlighting 10 useful PEAR libraries (better known as packages) that have become an indispensable part of my programming toolkit.

Included in their list of "Top Ten" are things like:

• Authenticating Users with Auth
• Cleaning Up Your Code with PHP_Beautifier
• Downloading Files with HTTP_Download
• Enforcing Coding Standards with CodeSniffer
• Managing Git Repositories with VersionControl_Git

Ilia is one of the people that get his hands dirty in the PHP core, and PHP has indeed many overlooked features. [...] However, thinking about this load of features inspired me to write this article: I'll include here 5 features that at first seem an hack, but can save your life while coding in PHP. In fact, you probably use or will use them every day without noticing.

His list of five is made up of the access our scripts have to private properties via Reflection, using eval, the __DIR__ constant, the fact that a closing "?>" isn't needed and the fact that PHP has "__sleep()".

CodeIgniter is a great framework. I use it exclusively because of it's flexibility and relative 'lightness' but what use is a framework without libraries to extend its usefulness? (well, not much use, naturally.) Here is my personal list of CodeIgniter libraries I would struggle to live without.

His list includes:

• QuickAuth
• R&OS PDF Class
• Curl library
• Paypal Lib

Error pages. Most people don't really consider error pages when building a website or application. They usually contain some debug information so that when something goes wrong the developer knows what is wrong. But in a lot of cases when an application goes into production, this information is still exposed.

He points out a specific example of a recent time when the only thing thrown to the page was an error about a database connection rather than anything more informative or useful to the typical visitor. He recommends that, at the very least, a website should still present these errors in a template similar to the rest of the site.

Your average visitor will come to your site expecting information. If something goes wrong (which can always happen), they only need to know that something went wrong, and perhaps they should get a phone number or e-mailaddress where they can report the error.

WordPress 3.0, scheduled to launch May 1st, 2010, will be a real revolution for the blogging system. With new functionalities such as custom post types, developers will be able to create more complex and more powerful sites based on WordPress. In this article, I have compiled the most useful resources to get you started with WordPress 3.0.

These eight code snippets deal with:

• Create a custom post type
• Custom post types with custom taxonomies
• Query custom post types
• Enable multisite feature
• Custom author profiles
• Add custom backgrounds
• Style WordPress editor using CSS
• Make your theme compatible with WordPress 3.0 menus

You can find out more about WordPress 3.0 on the project's site.

WordPress is driven by a MySQL database. This is something active WordPress users would know. However, if you only just read about it here from us, here's what you should know. [...] By simply executing a SQL query against your WordPress database, you can make the necessary changes quickly and efficiently.

The SQL queries cover a wide range of the popular blogging tool's features including:

• Change the Siteurl & Homeurl
• Change a URL in Content
• Change an Image Path Only
• Resetting Password
• Export all Comment Emails with no Duplicate

They also recommend you backup your database before executing any of these statements...just in case (instructions are included for that too).