Lukas Smith has just become the co-release manager for the much anticipated next stable release in the PHP 5.x series - PHP 5.3.

Its quite an honor and a challenge. [...] We hope together we have enough brain cycles to push put what is probably the biggest minor release in the history of PHP. Just take a look at the todo list and the scratchpad detailing all the additions.

He also asks for any help they can get to help identify all of the changes for the new release and to do the usual testing against the current CVS version with applications to see if there's any breakage. The more you test now, the less that has to be fixed post-release - so get out there and get testing!

DevShed has posted the second part of their series looking at installing and using web-based file managers written in PHP. This time they look at PHPfileNavigator2.

We are going to continue with the installation and configuration of web-based file managers. We'll present another freeware, open-source PHP-based file manipulation utility in the same way we explained bfExplorer in the previous part. This time, it's going to be the PHPfileNavigator2 (pfn2).

They cover the basics - installation (on a pre-existing Apache/PHP server), configuuration and some example screenshots of it in action when correctly set up.

DevShed has posted the first part of a series looking at the installation, configuration and usage of two web-based file managers - BytesFall Explorer and PHPfileNavigator. This first part of the series focuses on BytesFall.

Everybody knows how to use a conventional desktop application that acts as a file manager. And we all know how useful these manipulation utilities really are. They give us a hierarchical view of the content of our folders. They also have dozens of extra functions. [...] We will present two freeware PHP-based file managers. You'll find out how to install and configure them.

Part one handles the first steps with BytesFall - the installation and configuration (you'll already need a web server with PHP installed for this one).

A changing of the guard has taken place with the launch of the new branch of PHP - 5.3. Ilia Alshanetsky is no longer the release manager, instead Johannes Schlüter will be taking the lead.

From Ilia:

As per our tradition of changing Release Masters for every minor release, a new masochist, ;-) Johannes Schlüter will be taking of the role of RM for PHP 5.3 from me. I will continue to RM 5.2.X release, which has 1-2 releases in it still and will be actively maintained up until 5.3.0 is released into the wild, something that should happen early next year.

Ilia is stepping down after two years of service as release manager and, while sad to move on, is happy to see "new blood" move into the project to liven things up.

Check out Manfred Weber's comments on the change too.

As posted on Terry Chay's blog:

Company	Next Internet
Location	San Francisco, CA
Title	Engineering Manager
Summary	Next Internet is seeking an Engineering Manager for one of our fast growing companies in San Francisco, who is experienced in Internet marketing and advertising network startups with a keen interest in building out the world's best transaction platform. You will be responsible for building and developing the DNA within the company. The individual will be a key member of the engineering management team and will have substantial financial and career development upside. The successful candidate must be a self-starter and possess competitive technical and communication skills to carry out his/her job assignments. The successful candidate is expected to have minimum of 4 years of solid working experience with Internet advertising application architect/developer and will have be extremely hands-on and be willing to get "dirty" to help the business grow. We are currently developing a pre and post transaction platform for our client's customers all over the world. These range from order abandonment notifications, order shipment notifications, to promotional offers, to highly personalized recommendations. The Technology Platform team is responsible for all systems related to generation to our customers world-wide. The systems include: Our core internal automated system, responsible for prioritizing, scheduling and campaigns every day. These campaigns are generated by both completely automated personalized targeting systems as well as by individual retail merchandisers across the company. Our marketing and segmentation tools used by hundreds of business and technical users across the company. Our outbound infrastructure. Qualifications: The ideal candidate will have strong development skills, with experience in designing and architecting scalable high-performance systems and services that are also flexible, reliable and maintainable Extensive Startup Experience Experience with transport systems such as Strongmail, PowerMTA, Lyris, etc Experience with LAMP open source deployments and ecommerce technology: PHP, Perl, Python, MySQL, Postgres, Ruby, etc They will have excellent problem-solving skills, a solid understanding of computer science fundamentals, along with a quantitative mindset Database skills and experience with large-scale multi-tiered distributed systems are also highly desired This position offers a competitive base salary and bonus program, stock options, and other comprehensive benefits.If you want to work at a company where numbers continue to grow exponentially in every positive aspect, the environment/culture is awesome, the people are friendly and are constantly smiling, laughing, and actually look forward to going into work every day, this is the place to be! For immediate consideration, please submit a cover letter and resume to jobs [at] this site. Please put "Engineering Manager" in the subject field. We are an Equal Opportunity Employer.
Link	More Information

The Symfony project has announced two new managers to keep up with their 1.0 releases as they charge ahead to the 1.1 series. Noel Guilbert and Gregoire Hubert.

As per our commitment to support symfony 1.0 in the long term, we try to publish a bug fix release every month. Each release fixes various bugs and documentation typos but never introduces new features.

[...] They will be in charge of planning the coming releases, choosing the tickets to be included and the general packaging of the releases. What really settled my choice was that they work with symfony 1.0 on a day to day basis for Sensio customers and are part of the Sensio team.

Tickets for the 1.0 releases of the framework can still be submitted and detailed on the symfony developer mailing list.

On the Version Control Blog today there's a new guide that helps to make upgrading your Drupal installation a simple and happy experience with the help of git (the version control system).

Drupal development team has released Drupal 5.2 on July 26, 2007. It fixes two security vulnerabilities, so it is highly recommended that you upgrade as soon as possible. Many Drupal installations often contain extra Drupal modules, and almost always the also contain local customizations.

Question arises: how to upgrade your Drupal installations timely, safely, with confidence that none of your local customizations are lost; without need to remember each line that was edited and re-applying those edits to new version and without need to drastically change your workflow (very little discipline is needed actually).

This detailed guide walks you through the import of the source code, import of the Drupal modules and making the upgrades to the installation (drupal, drupal-and-modules and drupal-production) as well as how to resolve conflicts that might come up.

The PEAR group is happy to announce the release of the latest version of the popular package system for PHP - PEAR 1.5.0. Changes in the new version include extension enabling in php.ini, implementing TAP output option for run-tests command, recognize deprecated package/channel and display to user, and much more.

The community is also talking about the release:

• Greg Beaver's discussion of how this new version is "pushing the envelope".
• A release announcement from the International PHP Magazine website.

You can get the full information on this new release from the PEAR website or just head straight to the download page and grab the update.

In the continuing development of his online PHP-based game, Pádraic Brady has created a simple class to help with mapping out the objects/structures in the game. He shares the code for this in his latest blog post.

The code sets the stage for the Redux mapping system. Basically, we're aiming at a grid-based map with each grid coordinate representing a Sector.

Right now, it's just a skeleton structure, but it already has some of the key bits of functionality in place. The Redux_Map class manages the requests coming back and forth between the client and server, and the Redux_Map_Grid class helps to generate a grid structure of the objects found in that sector.

He even includes the unit tests for testing the Redux_Map_Grid class to ensure everything's in tip top shape. Next on his list is adding actual entities to the game - planets, facilities, etc.

In a follow-up to the previous post on the creation of a file manager with PHP, a new piece has shown up, augmenting it with the promise of a secure file manager created in PHP.

This is a follow-up tutorial on "Creating a file manager with PHP", and I highly recommend reading the previous tutorial first, before reading this tutorial.

In the previous tutorial I showed you how to build a simple file manager, which could upload, download, edit and delete, with PHP, but there was one problem: it wasn't completely secure if you had your upload directory in a public place. That's why in this tutorial I'm going to show you how to fix that.

In the new script he helps you rework the previous script, making it a bit safer for your files to be someplace public. One of the keys is creating a "protected file" with a 404 header at the top, thwarting any would-be leachers. He also includes the code for editing and deleting these protected files as if they were normal...