It's 2009 and several in the PHP community have already started posting their own looks back at last year - here's the list so far:

• Jani Hartikainen: Best of 2008
• Sara Golemon: 2008 Lookback
• Ivo Jansch: Goodbye 2008!
• Stefan Koopmanschap: A look back
• Web Builder Zone: A Year In Retrospect - Web Builder Zone's Top 10 For 2008
• Matthew Weier O'Phinney: 2008: The year in review
• Zend Developer Zone: Year-End Conference Round-Up
• Rob Allen: 2008 end-of-year wrap-up
• Matthew Turland: Another Year, Another Summary
• Travis Swicegood: 2008: a retrospective
• Andi Gutmans: Happy New Year!
• Michelangelo van Dam: Looking back to 2008
• Keith Casey: 2008 Year End Summary
• Chuck Burgess: Looking Back...2008

Keep checking back for more great posts as they're added! Have a post you want on the list? let us know!

2008 was a great year for the PHP community - lots of growth, enhancements and improvements have lead us to where we are today. The language is stronger than ever and attracting more developers than it ever has. Let's take a look at just some of the things that made 2008 what it was:

• Plenty of criticism and comparisons of PHP
• The rise in popularity of the elePHPants
• Growth in the PHP Women group (like the article contest and their 2nd brithday)
• 2008 - the Year of the Framework
• PEAR Bug Traige event
• Zend Framework's Dojo and AMF integration
• A growing emphasis on unit testing and debugging
• The last release in the PHP 4 series
• Ibuildings launches their Center for Expertise (and Cal Evans is appointed Director)
• Several major companies - like Microsoft and Adobe - show more interest in the PHP community
• Lukas Smith launched his emPHPower iniative
• php|architect launched their C7Y community website
• this site made the move to the Solar Framework
• PHPers participated once again in Google's Summer of Code
• PEAR elctions were held
• The Great Namespace Debate of 2008
• Plenty of podcasts were released - PHP Abstract and the P3 Podcast
• php|architect got a major overhaul of the site, the magazine and the structure of the company
• Zend launched a new certification - Zend Framework Certified Engineer
• Zend buyout rumors (no, it didn't happen)
• the elePHPant World Tour
• Continuing development on PHP 5.3

Conferences

• CakeFest
• PHP Brasil
• PHP London
• Dutch PHP Conference
• Zend/PHP Conference & Expo
• php|tek
• php|works/PyWorks
• PHP Quebec
• PHP Appalachia
• FrOSCon
• International PHP Conference
• PHP Camp
• OpenExpo
• PHP North West
• SymfonyCamp
• PHP Barcelona
• PHP Security Camp

Our own job postings

• Included companies like: CNet Networks, Ibuildings, Ning, InvestorGuide.com, Yahoo! and Schematic
• In places like: Paris, UK, Nashville, Barcelona, New York, Zurich, Dallas and Chicago