On the Zend blog they've posted a retrospective of 2016 and some of their most popular articles published over the last year.

The audience has spoken. From Zend Framework 3 release to Zend Server with PHP 7, from IBM i to AWS, the top ten articles on the blog from 2016 cover a wide range of topics to help you deliver PHP applications rapidly, reliably, securely, both on-premise and in the cloud.

Articles that made the list include:

• 10 ways Zend Server boosts performance
• AWS 101 for PHP developers
• Zend Framework 3 release
• PHP 7 is gaining momentum

Check out the original post for the full list. Predictably, most are related to Zend's own offerings but its good to see some other topics mixed in there as well.

Pascal Martin has made the tenth post in his series covering PHP 7.1 and how it differs from previous versions. While this series was previously mentioned there have been significant updates to the series warranting a new post.

Here is the full list of the current ten articles he's written up so far:

• PHP 7.1: introduction and releases cycle
• PHP 7.1: testing a pre-release
• PHP 7.1: enhancements to errors handling
• PHP 7.1: changes to types
• PHP 7.0: new features from the not-so-distant past
• PHP 7.1: better syntax, a more consistent language
• PHP 7.1: create a Closure from a callable
• PHP 7.1: a few other things
• PHP 7.1: actually… No!
• PHP 7.1: the road towards PHP 7.2 and PHP 8.0
• PHP 7.1: a few bc-breaks and conclusion

There's lots of good information about this upcoming minor release in each of these articles as well as an interesting view into the release process for a new PHP version.

Pascal MARTIN has been in the process of posting a series of articles to his site covering the upcoming PHP 7.1 release including coverage of both new and deprecated features. So far there's four articles post with the latest coming out today:

A new minor version of PHP is just around the corner: PHP 7.1! Its release date is not really set yet, as it depends on the amount of bugs that will be reported and fixed on Releases Candidates, but it should happen before the end of this year. One year after PHP 7.0, this first minor release will bring its fair share of new enhancements!

Let’s take a look at those, going with about ten posts spread over the next few days.

So far he's covered:

• introducing PHP 7.1 and its release cycle
• the methods used for testing a pre-release
• enhancements to error handling
• changes to types

Keep an eye on his site in the upcoming days for more pots in this series, helping you to prepare for the 7.1 release before it happens.

On the JetBrains blog Gary Hockin has just posted the latest "PHP Annotated Monthly" edition for September 2015. These posts cover recent happenings in the PHP community, linking to more information and the people involved.

As the autumn conference season begins to ramp up, it’s time for the September edition of PHP Annotated Monthly – bringing you all the news, tips, tricks and tutorials from the PHP community.

He touches on three main topics - the PHP language itself, news about various frameworks and tools talked about over the month and happenings in the community itself. Some of the topics mentioned include:

• the RC1 release of PHP7
• articles about hard-coding status codes and saving memory with generators
• New releases for Zend Framework, Symfony, WordPress and Drupal
• the new Expressive framework from the Zend Framework team
• the PHP Mentoring application

...and lots more. Check out the full post for more topics and links to plenty of others. You can also check out some of the back issues on the Annotated Monthly archive page.

The JetBrains blog has just posted their latest edition of the "PHP Annotated Monthly" series with their review for July 2015.

Our July issue of PHP Annotated Monthly is here, bringing you updates on PHP, frameworks, tools, tips for coding, community, and more. Read this month’s digest curated by Mikhail Vink, PhpStorm Product Marketing Manager.

In this month's article there's mentions of things like:

• New PHP versions released
• Work on PHP7
• Updates to various frameworks and tools
• Being able to order an elePHPant on demand (and the funding of the woolly mammoth
• PHP cheatsheets
• Information about contributing back to PHP

Check out the full post for even more topics and links to other great resources.

In response to some of the "problem with PHP" posts that have been circulating lately, Anthony Ferrara has posted about the "true problem" with PHP - less about the language, more about the community.

The core of the PHP community is filled with a lot of really talented and smart developers doing some really amazing things. But on the fringes, there are a lot of people who are writing articles, tutorials, and posts designed to help beginners learn the language (and usually how to program). The problem with this is that the majority of those authors frankly don't have a clue what they are talking about.

He talks about why this is a problem (bad practices promoted, bad code) and what you, as a PHP developer, can do about it...and maybe help in creating a separate tutorials site with content "approved" to provide good practices and quality code.

If you're into Open Source software (doesn't matter if you're new to it or an old hand), you'd do well to check out the book Henri Bergius has posted about - that he also contributed to - "Open Advice - FOSS: What We Wish We Had Known When We Started".

As quoted from the LWN review of the book:

Open Advice is a book that will be helpful to those who are new to FOSS, but, because of the individual voices, styles, and tones, it doesn't read like a "how to". It could even be recommended to those who aren't necessarily interested in contributing, but are curious about what this "free software thing" is all about.

It contains real experience from real developers that work on FOSS projects with chapters titled:

• "Code First"
• "University and Community"
• "Love the Unknown"
• "Quality Assurance"
• "Good Manners Matter"
• "Stop Worrying and Love the Crowd"

The book is licensed under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-SA) and can be downloaded in multiple formats - ePub, mobi, PDF and paperback, if you prefer that.

The ladies over on PHPWomen.org have opened up a new area in their forums - a place to discuss best practices in PHP.

Just a quick note that the Best Practices forum is now open and already has a couple of fast and easy articles in it for your viewing pleasure. For any aspiring writers - there is also a list of future articles if you want to try your hand at it.

There's already a few articles posted including ones discussing PHPDocumentor, spaghetti code, and variable abuse.

The ladies over on PHPWomen.org have opened up a new area in their forums - a place to discuss best practices in PHP.

Just a quick note that the Best Practices forum is now open and already has a couple of fast and easy articles in it for your viewing pleasure. For any aspiring writers - there is also a list of future articles if you want to try your hand at it.

There's already a few articles posted including ones discussing PHPDocumentor, spaghetti code, and variable abuse.

PHP Magazine has posted their latest weekly roundup for all things happening in the PHP community. This roundup covers June 12th through June 16th.

Some of the topics touched on this week include:

• the "Five Best Next Generation PHP Frameworks" article
• "The Evolution of PHP on the Internet" - Nexen.net's latest stats
• comparing mod_php and FastCGI
• the announcement of "Baking Day" from the CakePHP group
• and several of the new PEAR/PECL/Zend Framework updates from the week

Of course, this list only touches briefly on all of the happenings this week, so check out the full list on their site.