On the php[architect] site they've shared another article from their September 2018 issue. In this new article author Damien Seguy looks forward to PHP 7.3 and covers some of the new features that come with it.

PHP 7.3 successfully passed the “feature freeze” deadline. On Aug. 1st, 2018 all features for PHP 7.3 were identified. This triggered the first PHP 7.3 beta, on the following day, and, from there, we’ll reach RC in September. It is time to review what this new PHP version has available for us, help test PHP 7.3, and get ready.

He goes through several of the changes coming including:

• Improved Garbage Collector
• Relaxed Heredoc/Nowdoc
• Trailing Comma for Calls
• Deprecated Case-insensitive Constants
• PCRE 2.0
• SQLite 3.24
• Json_encode May Throw Exceptions
• array_first_key(), array_last_key()
• list() with References
• is_countable()
• net_get_interfaces()
• Removing image2wbmp()
• assert() is Now a Reserved Function
• Continue for Loops, Break for Switch
• Monotonic Timer: hrtime()
• compact() Reports Undefined Variables

For each of the items listed, there's a brief explanation of what the feature is and some code to show it in action. The tutorial ends with a listing of some things you can do to prepare your current codebase to work with PHP 7.3 ahead of the December 13th release date.

The Delicious Brains blog has kicked off a new series of posts walking you through the deployment of a WordPress site with automated (and repeatable) deployments.

Welcome to the first post in a workflow series on deploying WordPress. In this series, we’re going to look at how you can set up automated deployments for your WordPress site in a range of different ways.

They start off by answering the question of "why" for automated deployments. They make the point that automated deployments can help reduce the potential for human error, increase the reliability of the deployments and have many more benefits. Next they start in on the preparation work, helping you get several prerequisites set up before getting to the deployment process:

• Setting up the site on an accessible Git repository and having plugins/dependencies managed by Composer
• Deploying configuration files
• Disable FTP Access & File Editing
• Disable Auto Updates

The post also includes a section covering the deployment of the database for your application and any other media you might have related to it (images, files, etc).

With the final release of PHP 7.2 coming on the horizon the Exakat blog wants to be sure you and your code are prepared for some of the changes. In this new post they share things to change and improvements to expect in this latest version of the PHP language.

PHP 7.2 is around the corner, and shall be out soon, thanks to the hard work of @RemiCollet), Sara Golemon (@saramg) and countless others that run tests and submit bug reports. PHP 7.2 is already RC6, and the documentation has even been updated : it is high time to get ready for PHP 7.2.

We have been hard at work, at @Exakat, to prepare the migration analysis. This is our take on this upcoming task.

He's broken the changes coming down into a few categories based on the actions required and what you can do to prepare: Know, Lint, Static (Analysis), Unit testing and Logging. A chart is then included showing each of the changes, which category they fall into and links to more information about them and what has been updated (or added).

The Laravel Podcast, hosted by Matt Stauffer with guests Jeffrey Way and Taylor Otwell, has posted their latest episode - Episode #31: Public Speaking Preppers.

In this episode, the crew discusses preparing for conference talks, vacationing, and dreamy destinations!

You can listen to this latest post either through the in-page audio player or by downloading the mp3 directly. Be sure to subscribe to their feed or follow them on twitter for more information about the latest episodes as they're released.

Matt Frost has posted the first part of a series he's writing up about being an "Agent of Change" in your development organization with recommendations on how you can make changes for the better happen. In this first article, he looks at working up "the pitch" for new technology and practices.

We all to make changes that make our jobs easier, so if your change isn't meeting a need or helping to ease a pain point, it's probably not the right change. [...] Find something that makes your job harder or less enjoyable, there's a pretty good chance that you aren't the only one.

He recommends doing plenty of research before making your recommendations, especially if it's a "we should be doing, but don't know how to" kind of improvement. He uses test-driven development in his examples, with part of his pitch being that it reduces the number of bugs that make it into production.

When plans are well thought-out and researched, the element of risk that others perceive tends to dwindle. [...] It's not about pointing out the faults of others in the organization or assigning blame, it's about learning and making positive changes from the lessons you've learned.

Lorna Mitchell has had some experience at setting up and hosting tech-related events in the past and she wants to share some of the tips she's learned along the way to help make things easier for others in the same situation. This post is the first in that series - a look at some things to do to prepare before the event even starts.

For people organising events for the first time there are definitely some pitfalls that might not be obvious until you actually, well, until you fall into them! I thought I'd capture my experiences into a series of blog posts, in case they can help any future organisers to avoid some of the traps. First up: what to do before your event starts.

She makes a few recommendations such as getting a website for the event out early and include all of the important details right up front and picking a hashtag for the event so that folks on the various social media sites have a way to start developing the community around the event.