In a new post Dougal Campbell takes a look at the jQuery project's decision to use WordPress for their documentation site instead of a wiki.

I happen to like WordPress (duh). It's also interesting, because when a lot of people build documentation websites, it's pretty normal to choose a wiki. So, why would they want to switch an existing documentation resource from Mediawiki to WordPress?

He suggests two reasons they might have made the switch - data in WordPress is more structured (versus the loose associations common in most wikis) and some of the comments that have been made recently by Matt Mullenweg and some of the features related to the new developer portal.

On the IIS.net site today (in the Web Platform Installer section) a new walk-through has been published on their latest release of the Web Platform Installer (version 2.0).

The Microsoft Web Platform Installer (Web PI) is a free tool that makes it simple to download and install the latest components of the Microsoft Web Platform, including the IIS7, SQL Server Express, .NET Framework and Visual Web Developer.

The platform installer also allows you to install popular PHP-based software quickly and easily on your Windows servers (like WordPress, Drupal and SugarCRM). The walk through helps you to install the software, shows you some of the options you can choose for installable software and what you can find in each of the tabbed sections.

Vinu Thomas has started up a new series on his blog today that will look at how PHP works with other technologies outside of your typical LAMP stack:

I was quite interested in seeing what Microsoft had to offer for PHP developers. Going through the oveview of the programs, they seem to have come up with quite a few solutions for PHP developers. One of the important integrations for PHP is the ability to run PHP directly from IIS, as a FastCGI app, without having to install Apache in Windows.

The tool he mentions if is the Web Platform Installer Microsoft offers to make installing PHP and applications onto an IIS web server simpler. There's also a few tools included that have been missing from some of the standard installations - htaccess support, mod_rewrite abilities, PHP extensions and the Windows Cache extension (recently released).

In a new post to he blog Zoe Slattery helps developers to answer the question "will my application run on Project Zero?" (IBM's development/execution platform) She's come across a tool that can help with just that.

There is a new Project Zero application which will scan your application and tell you whether it thinks it will run on Project Zero. The way it does this is to extract information from the Project Zero PHP parser - for instance it finds out the names of functions that are declared in the application and compares them with the names of functions that are invoked.

The scanner looks through the code and, when it finds a function that's not user-declared, checks it against the Project Zero PHP functionality to make sure it will work.

On the RawSEO blog today Justin has posted five reasons why he thinks the OSCommerce e-commerce platform is a nightmare.

"The goal of the osCommerce project is to continually evolve by attracting a community that supports the ongoing development of the project at its core level and extensively through contributions to provide additional functionality to the already existing rich feature set." Why shouldn't I use it?

Here's his five reasons:

• no separation of logic and presentation
• difficult to integrate into an existing design
• security
• cannot have multiple sizes of image previews
• admin navigation issues

He includes some other options, too, just to give you an idea of what else is out there.

Brian Moon has posted about the rise of one of a new breed of web application software installs - things like GLAMMP.

First there was LAMP. But are you using GLAMMP? You have probably not heard of it because we just coined the term while chatting at work. You know LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP or Perl and sometimes Python). So, what are the extra letters for?

In this particular case, the extra letters are "G" for Gearman and "M" for memcached. His point is simple - web platform installs are not just as simple as "Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP" any more. There's a who host of other applications that can go right along with them and, in many cases, should for the stability of the site.

As Lauren Cooney mentions in a new entry to her blog, Microsoft has launched a new version of their Web Platform Installer - now including PHP!

Why do I need this? Well, first of all, this version of the WebPI installs the community version of PHP. Additionally, instead of going to several different websites to download and install Microsoft's web products, you can now seamlessly and quickly install them from one website - and you can update them from this website as well. This is the simplicity we have been aiming for - one website, one download, and simple updates to the best products for building web solutions.

The Installer includes a "Community Version" of PHP rather than a customized "Microsoft version" that allows for current PHP applications to be ported to the environment easily. Their Windows Web Application Gallery has also been updated with several new PHP-based applications that can be dropped right into the WebPI environment and used. You can find out the details about all of this (and more) on the Microsoft Web Platform site.

On the Zend Developer Zone today Richard Bates has posted his method for combining the Zend Framework with the Adobe Flash platform (Flex) to create richer and more powerful applications.

One of the most useful concepts in software development is the practice of creating modular, reusable code. As a developer, you're likely familiar with the heartache of reinventing the wheel. Doing so is certainly sometimes necessary, but when it isn't, you would be well served by using plug-and-play components. [...] And, as of version 1.7, Zend Framework includes an extension for native Adobe Action Message Format (AMF) communication between Adobe Flash Platform applications and PHP.

Using this AMF support, Richard shows how to create a sample Flex application that stores data into a backend database, validates that the user is "real" (via a CAPTCHA) and lets the organizer of the event know that new information has been added to the application. You can see the basic workflow here. There's plenty of screenshots, code and explanations to walk you through every step of the way.

The Zend Developer Zone has a new article posted looking to help you squeeze the most performance you can out of the Zend Platform application from Zend on your IBM i machine.

Zend Platform on IBM I provides many benefits including monitoring and advanced debugging. One of the more confusing issues that customers face with Zend Platform on IBM i is the impact on development machines. Most will try out Zend Platform in a development environment or on a development LPAR.

There's three things they suggest to tweak to help you get the most out of Platform - code acceleration, dynamic content caching and code compression.

Those wanting to get into Facebook development might want to check out this new site Hasin Hayder has been working on - a Facebook Cookbook (not affiliated with the O'Reilly book by the same name). He talks about it here.

So i am planning to star writing an open book (right now it is a blog, when we will have thousands or recipes we will make it a book) which will follow cookbook approach for Facebook application developers. I will highlight common problems (there are numbers of problems with no solutions in their wikis) and their solutions which I've learned in my last one and half year journey as an application developer on Facebook platform.

Several topics have already been covered including:

• facebook reveals status api - how to use it?
• how to resize facebook popup dialog box
• how to add profile tab for your facebook application
• how to successfully update all of your user's profile offline, at once!
• publishing on your friend's mini feed (no session key)