On the Web Developer Juice blog there's a new post that'll walk you through the installation and integration of the Apache ActiveMQ messaging service and how to integrate it with your application.

Apache ActiveMQ is one good option for implementing message queue in your PHP application. It can be easily installed on your server and it's web accessible admin interface really makes administrator's life easy. It can be easily connected with PHP via STOMP. I will suggest to use MySql for Data persistance and start ActiveMQ as unix service.

Their eleven step process includes getting the packages you'll need to run ActiveMQ, starting/stopping the service, setting up the STOMP transport connector and finally connecting it to MySQL. You can then install the PECL extension for STOMP and reload Apache to get it all working together. They even include a sample script to get you started.

John Lim has updated his Optimizing PHP article with some new tips on caching data:

In this chapter, we explain why optimizing PHP involves many factors which are not code related, and why tuning PHP requires an understanding of how PHP performs in relation to all the other subsystems on your server, and then identifying bottlenecks caused by these subsystems and fixing them. We also cover how to tune and optimize your PHP scripts so they run even faster.

The article talks about true high performance, some of the bottlenecks that can keep you from it, tuning your Apache/IIS web server, tips on caching and some ways you can benchmark your application to figure out the best configuration for you.

Matthew Turland has pointed out a pattern he's seen happening over and over again in the Zend Framework, what he calls the "Configuration Pattern".

Here's how it works. Have a look at the constructor for Zend_Form. It accepts an $options parameter, which can be an associative array or Zend_Config instance. If it's an array, setOptions() is called. If it's a Zend_Config instance, setConfig() is called, which then converts the Zend_Config instance to an associative array and passes that to setOptions(). So, either way, you end up in the same method with the same type of data. setOptions() then iterates over the associative array it receives. It takes the index of each element and looks for a corresponding setter method.

This method helps to reduce the overall function calls (including a method_exists) and can help to produce cleaner code in the process. A comment on the post also points out related comments from Matthew Weier O'Phinney about these options.

Brandon Savage has a new post to his blog today looking at some of the more essential settings to check out in your php.ini file when configuring your install.

When setting up a web server with PHP, there are a number of settings that are critical to consider. PHP 5.3 contains both a development INI file and a production INI file; however, users of older PHP releases (or those who don't have direct control over their INI files) will want to pay attention and make sure that certain settings are configured.

Settings in his list include:

• register_globals
• display_errors
• error_reporting
• short_open_tag

These are just a handful of the settings you can configure in your php.ini. Check out this list for many, many more.

On the SitePoint.com Web Tech blog, Craig Buckler explains how you can test multiple PHP/MySQL/Apache websites on your local machine without having to change your Apache configuration each time - the magic of VirtualHosts.

It is rare to find a web developer with responsibility for just one website. In this article, we will configure your development PC so you can test any number of websites using a dedicated domain name for each one. You will require a local installation of Apache 2.2 and, optionally, PHP and MySQL.

He explains the only two parts you'll need to get it up and running - changes to your hosts file and updates to the Apache configuration file to add in VirtualHost records for each site. He also throws in a bonus tip about detecting which host the script is being used on via the $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] variable.

New from NETTUTS.com is this tutorial looking at the construction of a social network with the help of Joomla.

Social network implementation has become a necessity for successful websites. Joomla!, the popular Open-Source CMS, has some great and affordable ways to bring your site to the social networking level. Let's review how.

He defines some of the strategy of the site to start - who will use it, how will they use it, how much control should they have, etc. He also lists several extensions that can be dropped into place to add in some of the more popular social networking functions like EventList, MyBlog and JomComments. The implementation of a few of these is shown (with a few screenshots) and examples of sites using Joomla for social networking are thrown in at the end.

On the Buildmeister blog there's an article detailing a setup for an automated project deployment process using Phing, dbdeploy and FTP.

A "well defined" build and deployment process (supported by a number of key tools or scripts) can often help reduce errors and increase the quality of delivered applications. In comparison with other languages, the PHP community has been somewhat slow in implementing build, deployment, code inspection and testing tools, however there are now a sufficient number available that have reached maturity.

They walk through what each tool is, how to configure them to work with each other and even on different environments (different development areas). Some configuration files and settings are included. The database deployment (with dbdeploy) is slightly different but can still be hooked into Phing and include a logging system (to a database table) for any updates.

Just for those PHP & Oracle users out there Chris Jones has posted a new entry to his Oracle blog detailing the different ways you can compile with oci8 support.

PHP OCI8 can be built using libraries from a full Oracle Database (or Database "Client") install, created from running the GUI installer. This is often referred to as an "ORACLE_HOME" install, since an environment variable of that name is set to the installed Oracle software directory. [...] Another dimension to the install is that PHP extensions can be statically compiled into the PHP executable(s), or built as shared binaries. If OCI8 is built as a shared library it is loaded into PHP as a result of setting the php.ini option "extension=oci8.so".

There's eight different methods he mentions including building it as a shared module, using the normal Oracle libraries to build and using the Instant Client libraries to run the build.

Following the initial release of Zend's latest software - Zend Server - Vikram Vaswani has written up a guide to help you get started using the Community Edition.

The last weekend was a little different. Having read about the new Zend Server Community Edition, I decided that instead of the usual procedure I follow to reinstall my PHP environment, I'd give the new one-click installer a try and see if it saved me some time. It worked out pretty well, and over the next few pages, I'm going to tell you what I did and guide you through the process of installing and using the application for your own development. And I'll also show you how simple it is to install and use PHP/MySQL applications under Zend Server CE, with a live demonstration using an off-the-shelf CMS.

He runs through the install of the software with screenshots of both the Linux and Windows-based installers. Following the install (complete with screenshots), he looks at the web-based admin interface and how to configure your install exactly how you want it. He installs phpMyAdmin and the Digitalus CMS system on top of it and ends up with a working installation and a basic "About Me" page to show for it.

In this new post from Chris Hartjes today he continues his look at combining a CakePHP application with the Nginx web server. This time the focus is on the configuration of the web server side of things to make the CakePHP routing work.

I'm in the process of creating the website for my upcoming book *and* had recently switched back from using Apache to using Nginx again, so I thought it might be time to roll up my sleeves and figure out how to make it work in a subdirectory. After much gnashing of teeth and pissing and moaning, I figured it out.

A simple configuration example is included as a part of the post showing how to correctly configure the rewrite routes to catch everything and send it back to the index.php file. His is a two-part process: it tries to match anything with "/foo" in it then, if it wasn't caught there, it sends it off to be rerouted to the front controller.