On the IBuildings blog Cal Evans has taken a look at the Windows caching technology (some recently released) from a management perspective and where it fits in the overall Windows caching toolsets available.

As PHP extends its reach further into corporate networks, IT managers have yet another technology that they have to understand so that they can properly deploy. In many situations, PHP code is being developed that - running on its own - creates a bad user experience because of the nature of the language. [...] Much of this delay, and the user unhappiness that always accompanies it, can be mitigated with the proper opcode caching solution. The list in this article was compiled to help managers understand what their options they have. These are the most popular or recent PHP opcode caching solutions.

He lists three of the more popular choices - the Alternative PHP Cachie, Zend Optimizer+ and the WinCache - touching briefly on what each has to offer.

Adam Gotterer has written up a tutorial with his process behind creating an object collection manager with PHP's built-in SPL functionality.

The purpose of a collection is to store objects in an organized manner with specific access rules. We are going to build a collection class using the Standard PHP Library (SPL). Our final product will be capable of iterating, counting and access to objects via array. If you are not familiar with SPL you can find some additional information on the PHP SPL manual site. Unfortunately the manual is somewhat lacking.

He creates an object that implements the ArrayAccess, Countable and Iterator objects to create a "Collection" class to hold his multiple objects inside an"objects" array. He includes some code to test the class and the output as a result.

As is mentioned in the latest post to his blog, Fabien Potencier has taken over as the project manager for the SwiftMailer project:

This is a great honor for me to take over such a project. The Swift Mailer project has been initiated by Chris Corbyn some years ago. He has done a wonderful job during the years, trying to find the best way to create a top-notch emailing solution for PHP. With the release of the 4th version of Swift Mailer earlier this year, I think we now have a very solid mailing library.

As a part of the effort to expand the use of the mailing library, it will become the default emailing solution for the Symfony framework. You can learn more about Swift Mailer from the project's website.

As finding good, qualified local PHP developers becomes harder and harder for some companies, they're slowly realizing that they might need to look outside their area for good talent. If you're a developer and are wanting to promote yourself as someone who can work as a remote employee, you might want to read this post (the first of a series) from Chris Hartjes on telecommuting.

My current position as a "software engineer" for XML Team Solutions is a 100% telecommuting job. [...] Now, when you have a company where none of your fellow employees works in the same city, let alone the same country, you quickly find out what the key issue really is: trust

He goes on to talk about how to build up that trust, not just with the other developers on your team but with the manager you're working with to show them you're the qualified employee they think you are. He also points out one of the big hindrances some companies take issue with on not having all their people in one place - easy meetings/collaboration.

This post was inspired by these thoughts from Cal Evans.

On the Ibuildings blog today Ivo Jansch has posted a look at PHP 5.3 from a slightly different perspective - how development with it affects the management.

At our Techportal Cal Evans gave an overview of the important changes, to make migration easier for developers. In this post,I'm going to look at the migration from a less technical angle, and explain when migration to PHP 5.3 is a good idea and when not.

He talks about why you should consider the move up to PHP 5.3 and some of the things you should use to handle (and pay attention to) the migration.

For those that might have missed it, the phpBB.com server was hacked via an unpatched version of another piece of PHP software running on the same machine. Stefan Koopmanschap has posted a bit about it and talks about what happened and what can be learned from it.

Yesterday the phpBB.com server got hacked. People who, like me, were there back in the days of phpBB2 will be reminded of the security flaws found in the software back then. However, this was not the cause of this hack. It was an unpatched version of another PHP package that caused the hack, which exposed amongst other things the full user database and several server passwords.

The problem was with an unpatched version of phpList, a mailing list manager, that allowed the hacker to get in and get out with a complete dump of the users table (including passwords and other private information).

I think the whole world can learn something from this: Your server is only as secure as your weakest link. So if you use any third party open source software, make sure that you always use the latest version, and that you subscribe to notification mailinglists of new releases. This will ensure that you get notified when new versions are released, so that you can patch your installation to the latest version and fix any vulnerabilities in the software.

According to this new post on his blog, Eli White has taken over the post of "community guy" at Zend (a post previously held by Cal Evans).

I've been offered a position at Zend, and accepted it. The official (lengthy) job title is Zend Community Manager/Leader & DevZone Editor-In-Chief. The short form to many people would be: "The job formerly held by Cal Evans" I'm extremely excited about this opportunity to work with Zend and to have the focus of my daily job to be working with the PHP community which I dearly love. I know that any attempt to fill Cal's shoes will be met with failure, so I hope instead to come up with my own twist on the position and to give it my best.

He'll be acting as the liason between the PHP company and the rest of the community including writing articles, doing some podcasting and all around getting in the middle of whatever's going on in the PHP community. Congrats Eli!

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.