On the SitePoint PHP blog there's a new post from author Tom Butler that starts from the very beginning and shows you how to write your first PHP code. The article is an excerpt from the SitePoint book PHP & MySQL: Novice to Ninja, 6th Edition.

PHP is a server-side language. This concept may be a little difficult to grasp, especially if you’ve only ever designed websites using client-side languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

A server-side language is similar to JavaScript in that it allows you to embed little programs (scripts) into the HTML code of a web page. When executed, these programs give you greater control over what appears in the browser window than HTML alone can provide. The key difference between JavaScript and PHP is the stage of loading the web page at which these embedded programs are executed.

At this point they assume you've already set up the server to allow for PHP execution. They then provide an example of a HTML page with a bit of PHP that generates a random number. It then gets into some of the basic language syntax and statements and how they're used in the PHP code.

If you've ever wanted to get into the world of Zend Expressive and haven't known where to start, Matthew Setter is offering something that might just fit the bill. He's announced a new course and book that introduces you to the framework and the essentials to get up and running quickly.

Perhaps you've not seen the news on Twitter, Facebook, or the mailing list. If so, you may not know that I'm actively working on a new book and course about Zend Expressive.

It's called: Zend Expressive Essentials.

Ever since ZendCon 2016, I've been thinking about turning my Zend Expressive talk into a book and course. I had a load of reasons both for and against. But I just couldn't shake the excitement around doing so. And have decided to do it!

His post talks about some of what the course and book will cover, providing a solid foundation for getting up to speed with Zend Expressive. The course/book is coming soon so you can subscribe for more information as updates are released.

The CloudWays blog has posted another in its series of interviews with members of the PHP community. In this latest article they talk with Stefan Priebsch of thePHP.cc (a consulting company) and some of his experiences, past and present, in the world of PHP.

Today, We are honoured to have Stefan Priebsch for this interview. He is a cofounder of thePHP.cc, a well known PHP consulting firm. He is also an entrepreneur, university lecturer and a thought leader in modern software application architecture. Stefan specializes in PHP powered enterprise applications and has built an enviable reputation as one of the best trainers in Germany.

Additionally, Stefan speaks regularly at international PHP conferences and wrote a book PHP 7 Explained with Sebastian Bergmann and Arne Blankerts. In this interview, he talks about his career, PHP 7 ebook and the latest developments in the industry.

In the interview Stefan answers questions about the benefits of the PHP 7.x releases, his work at thePHP.cc, his book, what development tools he uses and how he spends his free time. You can read his answers to these questions and more in the full interview.

If you've ever been interested in using Varnish as a caching layer for your application but weren't sure where to start, you're in luck. In a post to his site Thijs Feryn has announced the release of his book covering Varnish and helping you get started integrating it into your infrastructure.

I’m proud to announce that my Varnish book is out now. It’s called “Getting Started With Varnish Cache” and it’s available for download through Varnish Software. For the next 30 days, Varnish Software has the exclusive rights to distribute the book. After that, O’Reilly will also be distributing physical copies and the digital version of the book, while Varnish Software will continue to distribute the book on their website.

Varnish Software is currently offering the book for free (well, "free" after you give your personal info). Thijs gets into a bit of detail around the book, the process he followed creating it and what kinds of things Varnish can help with. He points out that it was "one hell of a ride" writing the book and getting it published but notes that it was a "fun experience" and probably won't be the last book he writes.

The Laravel News site has posted a book review by Diaa Fares of Adam Wathan's "Refactoring to Collections" book.

“Never write another loop again.” A strong promo sentence used by Adam Wathan to market his Refactoring to Collections book, but does it hold the promise? Well, together we will explore how close that claim is to reality.

If you are a Laravel developer, chances are you’ve heard about the collection pipeline before. While I use it a little in my projects I hadn’t realized the possibilities of this approach until I read Refactoring to Collections. It brought me to another level of thinking about utilizing the power and capabilities of functional programming.

The review goes on to talk about imperative versus declarative programming (with examples) and how the book walks you through "the journey" to move to a collections-driven code structure. The review also points out the amount of concepts to learn in the book and the style/effort that was clearly put into its creation. It also points to this RFC as hope for the native use of "arrow functions" in PHP in the future.

Giorgio Sironi has posted a review of a book to his site that shares fifty quick ideas to improve your tests that can help with things like run time, ease of maintenance and following best testing practices.

Fifty quick ideas to improve your tests is, well, a series of fifty quick ideas that you can implement on some of your automated test suites to improve their value or lower their creation or maintenance costs.

These ideas are pattern-like in which they are mostly self-contained and often independent from each other. They are distilled from real world scenarios that the authors (David Evans, Tom Roden and Gojko Adzic) have encountered in their work.

He's included a few quotes from the book he found particularly interesting including mentions of:

• a pyramid of software quality levels
• misunderstanding that testing can somehow be completely replaced by a set of carefully chosen examples
• difficult testing is a symptom, not a problem
• the problem with time-based "sleeping" in tests

You can find the book itself over on Leanpub and can pick up your own copy for around $10 USD.

The Laravel News site has a post about the official release of a new Laravel-related book, "Laravel Up and Running" from author and well-known Laravel-er Matt Stauffer.

Matt Stauffer who has been blogging about Laravel since the 5.0 release, the host of the Laravel Podcast, and partner and technical director at Tighten.co has been working on a new Laravel book, Laravel: Up & Running, published by O’Reilly.

The post lists out just some of the topics the book covers including:

• Tools for gathering, validating, normalizing, and filtering user-provided data
• PHPUnit, Mockery, and PHPSpec for testing your PHP code
• Interfaces for file system access, sessions, cookies, caches, and search
• Laravel’s specialty packages: Scout, Passport, Cashier, Echo, Elixir, Valet, and Socialite

You can order it now from O'Reilly as an ebook but the paperback will follow soon. The post also includes a mini-interview from Matt about the release of his book.

While not directly related to PHP and its community, several potential technical book authors out there will probably be affected by this. The popular publishing platform, Leanpub, has announced a change in their pricing to create new books with the service.

Leanpub is a powerful platform for serious authors. This platform is the combination of two things: a publishing workflow and a storefront. Leanpub is more than the sum of its parts, however – by combining a simple, elegant writing and publishing workflow with a store focused on selling in-progress ebooks, it’s something different.

[...] Our workflow is flexible. Authors can use our simple in-browser editor or upload completed ebook files, but most choose to write their manuscripts on their own computers, using either plain text (formatted using Markdown or Markua markup) or Word documents. [...] Our storefront is an elegant way to sell in-progress or completed ebooks. [...] Our royalty rate is better than Amazon’s and Apple’s royalty rates for any book over $2.99, and it is far better than Amazon’s royalty rate for books over $10.

[...] Today we are changing the pricing of Leanpub. Until now, Leanpub has been totally free for authors to use. [...] Going forward, it will cost money to create a new Leanpub book. Here’s the cost: $99 per book.

Previously the only charges were a percentage of the sales for books on the storefront but moving forward, there will be a flat $99 USD cost for new books created wth the service (in addition to the same royalty rate as before). This helps to fund this great service and keep the level of quality authors have enjoyed so far. More details about the changes for new books and the "grandfathering" of current books can be found on this pricing page.

Matt Stauffer has been busy writing a book to help people get "Up and Running" with the Laravel framework. However, life has caused delays (in the form of a new little girl) but he's back with an update on the book's status and some answers to frequently asked questions about it.

It's been a tumultuous summer, what with Stauffer Child #2 arriving and me finally finishing Laravel: Up and Running. A lot of folks have been asking me about timelines for the book, so let me share what we have here.

He talks about how, despite finishing the actual writing of the book already, the other things that came up added some delays to the final version being ready (like the baby and Laravel v5.3). He wanted the latest from 5.3 to be in the book, so portions were added and updated to include them. For those that just can't wait, there's already a pre-release version you can buy or you can wait until the October/November release date. He ends the post answering a few questions covering who the book is for, what version of Laravel it's for and what it offers that the documentation can't.

In this new post to his site Freek Van der Herten shares some of the things he learned from reading the book "Laravel: Up and Running", helping you to get a Laravel application up, running and understood easily.

Matt Stauffer is currently putting the final touches on his new book called Laravel: Up And Running. It aims to be a good guide for newcomers to the framework. But even if you’ve got some experience with Laravel, it should be worth your time to read it. Even Matt himself picked up a lot of cool stuff while writing it.

During my holiday I read an advance copy of the book containing all chapters expect the ones that touch on Laravel 5.3 specific functionality. I can say that it is very well written and it complements the official documentation well. Here are some of the things I’ve learned from reading this book.

His list of "lessons learned" includes topics like:

• Sending a download response
• Sharing a variable with all Blade views
• Using closure based commands
• Eager load the number of related records

Each one comes with a bit of code, mostly just one line (as that's all it takes) but it's interesting to see some of these handy tips and tricks to make it easier to work with the Laravel framework in your applications.