On the Symfony blog there's a new post about a major upcoming milestone for the framework: their 500 millionth download of version 2.0 of the framework.

Symfony 2.0 was released on July 28th, 2011. The biggest difference from Symfony 1.x was the internal architecture of the framework, which was designed around a set of stand-alone and decoupled PHP packages called Symfony Components.

In the five years since it's initial release the download count is getting closer to the 500 million mark all the time. They've even provided a real-time(ish) dashboard of the current count so you can keep track yourself if you'd like. The post also asks the Symfony users out there to share some of their own photos on Twitter of when the milestone is reached and even offers potential prizes to those that participate (a raffle).

So talk to your work mates, prepare a way to display symfony.com/500million in your office and share some photos of the moment so you get a chance to win. And while we wait for the moment ... keep downloading those Symfony packages!

As Andi Gutmans mentions on his blog, the Zend Framework has reached the 10 million downloads mark and is still going strong:

When I started the Zend Framework project back in 2005 I was sure that we could make a difference. Some thought it was a long shot with too ambitious goals, after all I wanted to start from scratch without a single line of code, no community contributors and no corporate contributors. We are now 3.5 years later and I have to say Zend Framework's success has exceeded my own foresight and expectations.

He mentions the teams behind the Framework and some of Zend's partners that have helped to make it an amazing success.

Damien Seguy has submitted the latest PHP usage statistics for the results of April 2008.

Highlights in this month's edition include:

• PHP 5.2.6 is growing up fast, thanks to no PHP 5.3
• PHP 5 reaches 38.93% of PHP market share, up 2%
• They passed the mark of 30 millions domain tested this month

You can get the full stats (including the numbers and some great graphs) from the Nexen.net website - full stats, evolution stats.

As mentioned by DynamicWebPages.de, the latest PHP usage statistics have been released for November 2006.

Overall, the spread of PHP seems to have settled down this month to a more stable value. For this month, the number of domain using PHP came in at 19 million (19,404,533) and the number of IPs using PHP is at 1.3 million (1,319,743). This drop can be somewhat attributed to several hosts being made aware of the "expose_php" setting in their installations and turning it off for security reasons.

You can check out this month's numbers as well as how it relates to previous months (and years) in this graph.

As mentioned by DynamicWebPages.de, the latest PHP usage statistics have been released for November 2006.

Overall, the spread of PHP seems to have settled down this month to a more stable value. For this month, the number of domain using PHP came in at 19 million (19,404,533) and the number of IPs using PHP is at 1.3 million (1,319,743). This drop can be somewhat attributed to several hosts being made aware of the "expose_php" setting in their installations and turning it off for security reasons.

You can check out this month's numbers as well as how it relates to previous months (and years) in this graph.

Andi Gutmans has a note of celebration on his blog today - the book that he, Stig Bakken, and Derick Rethans worked on, "PHP 5 Power Programming", has officially passed one million downloads.

A few days ago I was informed that the PHP 5 Power Programming book has now been downloaded over 1 million times. Exposure no doubt. And considering that there are about 4.5 million developers out there, it's safe to say that probably between 1 in 5 PHP developers have actually laid their hands on it (or should I say their computer screens on it).

Andi mentions also being happy to see this milestone crossed for many reasons, one of which that it's a sign of the PHP community maturing. To grab your copy, check out this page on phptr.com.

Andi Gutmans has a note of celebration on his blog today - the book that he, Stig Bakken, and Derick Rethans worked on, "PHP 5 Power Programming", has officially passed one million downloads.

A few days ago I was informed that the PHP 5 Power Programming book has now been downloaded over 1 million times. Exposure no doubt. And considering that there are about 4.5 million developers out there, it's safe to say that probably between 1 in 5 PHP developers have actually laid their hands on it (or should I say their computer screens on it).

Andi mentions also being happy to see this milestone crossed for many reasons, one of which that it's a sign of the PHP community maturing. To grab your copy, check out this page on phptr.com.

According to this new post on Chris Shiflett's blog, Zend has recieved another "boost" to their cash flow to the tune of $20 million in a fourth round of funding.

Chris cites both this News.com article and Zend's own press release on the topic:

The new funds will enable us to expand faster in emerging geographical markets, accelerate our product development and extend the services organization to meet the demands of our growing number of enterprise PHP customers.

He looks at it positively, noting that what's good for Zend is, ultimately, good for PHP - and this is very good for the company.

According to this new post on Chris Shiflett's blog, Zend has recieved another "boost" to their cash flow to the tune of $20 million in a fourth round of funding.

Chris cites both this News.com article and Zend's own press release on the topic:

The new funds will enable us to expand faster in emerging geographical markets, accelerate our product development and extend the services organization to meet the demands of our growing number of enterprise PHP customers.

He looks at it positively, noting that what's good for Zend is, ultimately, good for PHP - and this is very good for the company.

PHP just keeps growing and growing - popularity is back on the rise and DynamicWebPages.de has the statistics to prove it.

In breaking down the statistics for the period of December 2005 through January 2006, over 1.9 million domains are using PHP, and the number only continues to climb. In February, the upward trend continued and usage jumped up 1 million domains more. March, however, has only seen about 100,000 additional domains making the total 21,439,178. On the server side of things there's never much fluctuation and it still sits steady around the 1.3 million mark.

PHP usage took a hit in usage around the beginning of the year, but it's coming back quickly and will soon be back up to the 23 million domain usage soon.