On PHPBuilder.com today there's a new tutorial showing how to use libcurl to communicate with multiple protocols like FTP, HTTP, HTTPS, SMTP and STMPS. The libcurl library that can be compiled in or installed as a shared module in your PHP install to provide enhanced networking abilities.

As I wrote in my PHP multithreading with cURL article, the libcurl is a free and easy-to-use client-side URL transfer library, supporting DICT, FILE, FTP, FTPS, GOPHER, HTTP, HTTPS, IMAP, IMAPS, LDAP, LDAPS, POP3, POP3S, RTMP, RTSP, SCP, SFTP, SMTP, SMTPS, TELNET and TFTP. PHP supports the libcurl library which allows you to connect and communicate to many different types of servers with many different types of protocols.

The tutorial focuses on two different types of connections (well, four really) - FTP/FTPS and HTTP/HTTPS - and how to transfer data across each. Some code is included to create a (procedural) tool to send an uploaded file to a remote site.

Chris Hartjes has posted his review of the Packt Publishing book "PHP 5 Social Networking" they had asked him to review.

I'm glad I decided to take a look at this book. It's pretty dense at 450+ pages, but it really does work you through from start to finish how to build a small social networking site in PHP. Okay, it's about dinosaurs, but let's not quibble. I'm not into long-depth book reviews, so we can talk about what I liked about this book.

He likes the consistency of the book's approach to the subject and points out that it promotes refactoring and improving code over striking out and using something new and trendy. He also mentions their emphasis on security. The one thing he didn't like about the book was a simple one - there were no unit tests to back up any of the code in the book.

Kevin Schroeder has a new post today with an excerpt from his book "You Want to do WHAT with PHP?" - the first chapter looking at networking and socket connections.

I'm also woefully behind on blogging. So, to alleviate that I am going to post an excerpt from my upcoming book "You want to do WHAT with PHP?" Today we are going to take a look at Chapter 1.

The sample chapter talks about figuring out the host to netmask relationship relationship by parsing the IP with the ip2long and comparing that to the list of netmasks from an array. Sample code is provided as well as output for reference.

In a new post to her blog Anna Filina looks at another side of conferences (technology or otherwise, really) besides just the usual goal of attending every session that sounds interesting. As she suggests, conferences are also a great place for networking.

There are many networking events, but I find that the best ones are Web conferences. It is where you meet other geeks like you, book publishers, great contacts at some of the biggest companies, contributors to your favorite open source projects, potential start-up partners and the list goes on.

She touches on a few topics to consider when coming at the conference from a networking angle - why you should care, how to make the time to really get to meet and know people, keeping track of those you meet and whether or not the conference organizers care about the networking environment (hint, they do).

On the WebReference.com site there's a review recently posted about a PHP-based content management system - a system targeted more towards creating social networking sites than just generic content management.

This CMS has everything a developer needs to create a top of the line social networking site with all the features that users have come to expect from sites like MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn. [...] Understand that, unlike Elgg, Drupal, Joomla and Dolphin, phpFox is not Open Source (although it is written in PHP). It sells for $300 for a full license, which includes 6 months of free upgrades and support, or you can purchase a monthly license for $39.95, which includes free upgrades and support for each month that is purchased. While $300 may seem like a lot when there are other social networking software packages available for free, as they say, you get what you pay for.

The reviewer goes on to talk about the installation of the software, modules included, core features and some of the more updated, included features like a marketplace module, profile photo cropping, spam filtering, privacy settings for each user and a video module.

Paul Gregg has a quick post informing PHPers that use of some of the resources and groups the LinkedIn service has to offer.

Since LinkedIn opened up its Groups system, there has been a huge growth in the number of groups related to PHP. Some with charters, some without; some with a specific community background and others with a specific regional focus. I am posting this to bring attention to some of them.

Among the groups on his list are ones like LinkedPHPers, PHP Technology Specialists and a PEAR group. There's a lot of recruiters that come through trolling for jobs on some while others ban those posts all together - it just depends on the group.

DevShed has the second of a two part tutorial posted today on sending emails with the included mail() function.

In this article we will look at the protocol that is involved in sending email messages. We will also examine the thorny issue of how to send an attachment with an email message. This article is the second of two parts.

They include examples of sending simple messages and more complex ones with things like attachments and custom headers. They also tack on a look at the PEAR::Mail package to the end showing how it can make sending some things a little less painful.

The PHP::Impact blog has pointed out a new bit of software that can help you get your social networking application "up and running in minutes" - Symfonians.

Symfonians is an open source (CC-BY-SA 3.0 licensed) project-centric social networking web application written in PHP5 and based on the Symfony framework (1.0 stable version is used). The code has been extracted from the Symfonians.net application.

Lots of features are included like an applications directory, a job offers catalog, weblog management, maps and geolocation and support for microformats. Check out the project's site for prerequisites and quick install information (via subversion).

The PHPEveryDay.com website has posted some more tutorials recently - here's the list:

• PHP Network: Pinging Remote Hosts
• Web Content: Crawl Image Source a Web Page
• Web Content: Getting All URL in a Web Page
• Web Content: Reading Other Web Page
• Web Content: Forcing Browser Downloads
• Web Content: Calculating Script Execution Times
• Web Content: Protecting E-mail Address
• Web Content: Changing URL Text become Active URL

Check out the rest of the site for even more great tutorials and articles.

Stoyan Stefanov points out that the CMS nomination awards have now been opened for public voting (of which he is one of the judges of the PHP category). The event is put on by Packt Publishing:

The Packt Open Source Content Management System Award is designed to encourage, support, recognize and reward an Open Source Content Management System (CMS) that has been selected by a panel of judges and visitors to www.PacktPub.com. Following on from the success of 2006, Packt has expanded the Award for 2007 with an increase in prize money and the addition of new categories.

There are five different categories this year:

• Overall Winner
• Most Promising Open Source CMS
• Best Open Source PHP CMS
• Best Other Open Source CMS
• Best Social Networking CMS

You can nominate your favorite CMS from the Packt site for each of the categories. The nominations only last until August 31st, so get in there and get your vote in!