On the Symfony blog the project has made an announcement about a new addition to the Symfony team to help handle security issues around the framework: Michael Cullum

Handling security issues responsibly and transparently is key to the success of any Open-Source project. Symfony is no exception. We documented the process of our security management policy a long time ago.

[...] Today, I'm very happy and proud to announce that we are getting to the next level. Michael Cullum accepted to join the Symfony Core Team to lead the security team. He will be responsible for managing the security process.

Michael is the secretary of the PHP-FIG group, represents the PHPBB project and is a heavy user of the Symfony framework. Having Michael on the team means that there will be a central point of contact and someone whose primary role is ensuring the safety and security of the overall project and framework.

On the SitePoint PHP blog there's a new post from author Shahroze Nawaz that shares the results of a survey performed with several "prominent PHP community members" about their usual development workflows.

Workflow refers to both the process and the tools that are used in this process. Almost every developer comes up with a process of creating and finalizing the project deliverables. This process is implemented through a set of tools that the developer comes up with through trial and error. Once a workflow has been perfected, developers follow the process almost religiously because of a simple reason: following workflows reduces most of the management problems that developers have to face during a project.

[...] Here are some of the PHP ecosystem’s most popular developers and designers, and their tools and/or workflows. Note that these workflows will by no means be comprehensive, but even mentions of tools used by some of the more prominent members of our community should be enough to warrant checking them out.

PHP community members on the list include:

• Taylor Otwell
• Phil Sturgeon
• Nicolas Grekas
• Manuel Lemos
• Josh Lockhart
• Cal Evans
• Kat Zien
• Laura Elizabeth

Each person on the list describes their tools of choice for both development related tasks and how they keep organized. There's plenty of links to these tools and services too for you to check them out on your own.

In this recent post to his site Sam Greenwood gives a high level overview of functionality that's becoming more popular and widely used - event sourcing. His post is a guide to event sourcing "for the rest of us" that aren't familiar with it but want to get an understanding of what it's all about.

Event sourcing can be described as storing the events that happened in your system in the order they happened, in some kind of store. These events are then replayed to recreate state in your system, rather than just having a single row in a table, using event sourcing, you have a full history of actions that happened in your system, and how your state got to the given point that it is in.

He uses a single entity in his illustration, showing how the changes would be put into an EventStore repository (possibly stored in something like this). He then sets up his event system for "members" and shows how to apply the different associated events. This is then sent to the repository for handling and saving to whatever data source you have defined.

On the CloudWays blog there's a new post with comments from several members of the PHP community about why they feel that managed cloud hosting is a better option when it comes to hosting their applications.

Not many people realize that their choice of hosting solution could determine the success or failure of their project. Even the best code base fails to perform to its maximum potential because of a hosting solution that fails to provide appropriate support.

[...] In order to understand why many industry leaders recommend managed cloud hosting for PHP projects, it is important to understand the benefits of these hosting solutions. In effect, managed cloud hosting offers three important benefits.

These three benefits involve the offloading of the usual hassles of server management, improved security and scalability. Members of the PHP community that contributed their opinions include:

• Anna Filina
• Adam Wathan
• Josh Lockhart
• Tessa Mero
• Matt Stauffer
• Manuel Lemos

Check out the full article to read their thoughts on why managed cloud hosting is the way forward.

The PHP-FIG has officially started the voting process for the PSR-4 autoloading standard that would provide an interface to make autoloading a bit more standardized across applications.

The purpose is to specify the rules for an interoperable PHP autoloader that maps namespaces to file system paths, and that can co-exist with any other SPL registered autoloader. This would be an addition to, not a replacement for, PSR-0.

The current autoloading standard definition (PSR-0) still allows for the use of the underscore in class names to resolve to directory paths in the application's files. In this new standard, that allowance is gone, relying only on the actual namespacing to define package pathing. This "package-oriented autoloading" is set to help move PHP package development forward into a more standardized structure.

The Voices of the ElePHPant podcast has released their latest episode - an interview with Laura Beth Denker of Etsy.

Cal's "three questions" for her were:

• What's your title, what it means and what do you do? ("Anthropologist of Developer Culture")
• Can you talk about the toolset Etsy uses for continuous integration?
• Can you discuss private methods and why you like them?

You can listen to this latest episode either via the in-page player, by downloading the mp3 directly or by subscribing to their feed.

The Voices of the ElePHPant podcast has posted their latest episode - an interview with Luke Stokes, a co-founder of FoxyCart.

Cal's "three questions" for Luke were:

• Why did you choose PHP to build the Foxycart platform?
• What did you learn in the process of becoming PCI certified?
• What lessons do you have for people looking to put together a platform and an API?

You can listen to this latest episode either via the in-page player or by downloading the mp3 directly.

The Voices of the ElePHPant podcast has released their latest episode, an interview with Chris Shiflett (as recorded in 2011).

In the interview they talk about things like:

• Chris' security experience
• The PHP community's shifting focus on security
• What's the biggest security mistake PHP developers still make?
• Cross-site request forgeries
• Chris' current work with Mapalong

You can listen to this latest episode either by using the in-page player or by downloading the mp3 directly. You can also subscribe to their feed to get the latest.

The Voices of the ElePHPant podcast has released their latest episode (one recorded a while back) - an interview with Elizabeth Naramore, a well-known PHP community member.

This episode was recorded in 2011. Elizabeth now works for Orchestra.io. It’s still a fun interview though because...well, it’s Elizabeth.

You can find her blog here and follow her on Twitter here. If you'd like to listen to this latest episode, you can either listen in-page or download the mp3 directly.

On 7php.com today there's a new community interview - this time it's with Michelangelo van Dam, the President of the PHPBenelux user group and well known PHP speaker/community advocate.

In this edition, I talked with Michelangelo van Dam a senior PHP/Zend Framework consultant. This man really needs no introduction; he is so much of an invaluable asset to the PHP community. As per wefollow.com, he is ranked as the 4th (out of 113) most influential person on Twitter for #zendframework and as the 25th (out of 2,543) most influential person for #php

Questions in the interview cover everything from a bit of history about Michelangelo out to how supportive the PHP community is:

Give and expect nothing in return. People appreciate it more when you give something from the heart instead of giving something as a favor for a future return.

Other questions touch on his "community animal" nickname, his community/life balance and his tracking of the work Microsoft is doing to help the PHP language.