Matt Curry has a new post to his blog listing a few ways that you can help get the most out of your CakePHP application's performance.

It's a not so well kept secret that CakePHP is slow. What isn't well know is that this is done by design. I could get in a lot of trouble by revealing this, but I'm willing to take that risk. [...] Every time you use one of the tips in this article it's one less gold chain on the neck of a Cake developer.

Here's his list of eight tips:

• Set Debug to 0
• Cache your slow queries/web service requests/whatever
• View Caching
• HTML Caching
• APC (or some other opcode cache)
• Persistent Models
• Store The Persistent Cache in APC
• Speed Up Reverse Routing

Some of the tips are CakePHP specific, but several of them (the caching) can be useful no matter what sort of application you're using - framework or not.

Felix Geisendorfer has another quick CakePHP tip - an update from a previous tip for forcing utf8 connections on multiple databases:

This is just a quick update for Dessert #6 - MySql & UTF-8. I've been using the approach outlined in that old post pretty much until today, when I realized that it has two major flaws: It does not work when using multiple db connections (i.e. using load balancing or connecting to a 3rd party db), and it might interfere with other databases that don't need this utf8 thing to be set.

He includes some code (a quick 13 liner) to take care of this small issue. Check out the comments on the post for an even easier way too.

Felix Geisendorfer has another quick CakePHP tip - an update from a previous tip for forcing utf8 connections on multiple databases:

This is just a quick update for Dessert #6 - MySql & UTF-8. I've been using the approach outlined in that old post pretty much until today, when I realized that it has two major flaws: It does not work when using multiple db connections (i.e. using load balancing or connecting to a 3rd party db), and it might interfere with other databases that don't need this utf8 thing to be set.

He includes some code (a quick 13 liner) to take care of this small issue. Check out the comments on the post for an even easier way too.

As posted on Felix Geisendorfer's blog:

As posted on Felix Geisendorfer's blog:

Felix Geisendorfer has a new post today showing off an example of his screencasting abilities. Specifically, the video looks at using vendor branching to keep your CakePHP installation up to date.

So here I go with my very first screencast to be published. The topic is how to use vendor branching with CakePHP which is one of many ways to keep your CakePHP version up to date.

The video is 15(ish) minutes long and covers, from start to finish, the process of grabbing the latest CakePHP build from the subversion repository and install it automatically to your system.

As a plus, Felix also includes links to the software he used to make the screencast for those that are curious.

Felix Geisendorfer has a new post today showing off an example of his screencasting abilities. Specifically, the video looks at using vendor branching to keep your CakePHP installation up to date.

So here I go with my very first screencast to be published. The topic is how to use vendor branching with CakePHP which is one of many ways to keep your CakePHP version up to date.

The video is 15(ish) minutes long and covers, from start to finish, the process of grabbing the latest CakePHP build from the subversion repository and install it automatically to your system.

As a plus, Felix also includes links to the software he used to make the screencast for those that are curious.

The Bakery has several new articles and tutorials today (it's hard to keep up sometime!) so here's the list:

• Rails-like Data Validation
• Elistic: a Social Link-Listing Site in My Spare Time
• Textile
• The Cake is Rising

Be sure to check out the rest of the Bakery site for more great CakePHP tutorials and info to help you get the most out of this great framework.

The Bakery has several new articles and tutorials today (it's hard to keep up sometime!) so here's the list:

• Rails-like Data Validation
• Elistic: a Social Link-Listing Site in My Spare Time
• Textile
• The Cake is Rising

Be sure to check out the rest of the Bakery site for more great CakePHP tutorials and info to help you get the most out of this great framework.

Matthew Weir O'Phinney had the chance to present the Zend Framework during a meeting he attended of his local PHP user group (BostonPHP) as a part of a series their doing.

Horde was also represented as part of the evening's fare. It was the first time I've attended a UG, so I got the double whammy of that and being a presenter. Oh, make it a triple whammy -- Boston is a 3+ hour drive from the Burlington, VT area I now call home.

He mentions a talk that Chuck Hagenbuch (of the Horde project) gave on the current state of the project and a bit about his presentation (including some portions that pointed out problems with the Zend_Db component). You can check out this and the rest of the contents of his presentation here [pdf] and here [mp3 podcast].