In order to help potential PHP employers find that developer of their dreams, the PHPClasses.org website has launched their own jobs section "dedicated to announce jobs specifically for PHP professionals".

Having perceived this extraordinary need for qualified PHP professionals, in the latest months the development of the PHPClasses site has been focused in making it easier for businesses to find PHP professionals. [...] The PHPClasses site is launching a complement to the PHP professionals directory. It is new job site dedicated exclusively to post PHP jobs. Actually, it is not a separate site, but rather a new section of the PHPClasses site: http://www.phpclasses.org/jobs/

This new section allows employers to post their open positions complete with the skills required and see as being able to search for someone matching those criteria. Pricing for posting the jobs ranges anywhere from $25 USD and $75 USD based on the type of user posting and how urgent it is that the post is released.

James McLean has done his own review of the APress book "Beginning PHP and Oracle":

Published in August 2007, Beginning PHP and Oracle: From Novice to Professional weighs in at a hefty 763 pages long. It's one for the bookshelf, not for the backpack thats for sure!

He goes through the sections of the book - the PHP intro, some of its "Enterprise thinking", mentions of MySQL and SQLite and, of course, the large amount of Oracle content (both in using Oracle alone and in connecting the two together).

If you're in the market for a book to perhaps learn PHP and would like to move onto advanced concepts later on, this book is worth a look. If you're an experienced PHP developer and looking for an introduction into the world of Oracle, this is the book for you.

On freegrok.com a new review of an APress PHP-related book has been posted, a look at W. Jason Gilmore's "Beginning PHP and MySQL: From Novice to Professional, Third Edition".

Walking through your local bookstore will show that there is definitely no shortage of books related to PHP and MySQL. These ubiquitous technologies have been many a beginner's foray into the world of web development. Since both are free and widely supported it's a safe bet that the software you create can be used in almost any circumstance with relative ease. Beginning PHP and MySQL: From Novice to Professional, Third Edition is a good resource to get you started on your way.

The reviewer breaks down the chapters of the book and points out two chapters (web services and MVC with the Zend Framework) that he though were noteworthy for budding developers to look in to.

All in all W. Jason Gilmore has done an excellent job of bringing a wide ranging topics into a manageable size and retaining much of the value for later use.

Akash Mehta has posted a list of suggestions he has for developers wanting to move up and enhance their skills in the language:

So, you're an up-and-coming PHP developer, you're spending a lot of time learning new tricks and you're always on the bleeding edge when it comes to using technologies in your web applications. What's next?

His four answers to "what's next" are:

• Read books, write code.
• Attend conferences
• Take courses and qualification tests
• Watch the web

...with the final one being his most important.

Manuel Lemos has posted an update about the PHP professionals directory hosted on the PHPClasses.org website - there's a new widget/gadget for your custom Google homepage that will show all of the professionals from a country in a map.

The PHP professionals directory initiative has been enhanced to make it more efficient in its goal to bring together more PHP professionals and businesses willing to hire them.

Now there is a gadget available to provide more exposure to PHP professionals in iGoogle (Google personalized home page), Google Maps, Google Earth or in any other Web site page.

You can add the gadget to a few different places including:

• your iGoogle page from this link
• your Google "My Maps" page with this link
• to your own site with this information
• or you can just import the whole list in a kml format

The professionals directory is located here.

In an effort to help employers/recruiters/etc find the PHP people they're looking for, the PHPClasses.org website has launched their PHP Professionals Directory:

So, I thought to myself, instead of recommending people, I could provide a place where available PHP professionals looking for work could list. Then companies can look up the list of available professionals and contact them directly.

Developers are divided first by country, then by name and have all the contact information you'd need (address, zip, location, phone) to get in contact with the developer. You can also add your own profile to the directory to make it easier for others to find you.

On his blog, Tobias Schlitt points out an offering that DynamicWebpages.de will be offering beginning November 29th (2007) - some Professional PHP online training.

This series of online sessions offers you "24 hours of PHP knowledge, from professionals, to professionals". Topics covered in this series of talks are: Regular Expressions, XML and Webservices, Debugging using Xdebug, Zend Framework, [and more].

Instructors for the courses include Kore Nordmann, Christian Wenz, Stephan Schmidt and "other community known experts". The talks will be in 2 hour long online courses and will only be presented in German. This first time it's being offered, there's a discount for the signups - a 200 Euro discount. Check out the training page for more information.

Wolfgang Drews has posted about a new German professional PHP training and certification course being offered through phpzertifizierung.eu.

Great News, we have finally managed to develop and set up the first german speaking PHP Professional course for advanced PHPer! The course is packed in 2 Weeks, 12 sessions and 24 hours!

They have a great lineup of trainers including Tobias Schlitt, Christian Wenz, Kore Nordmann and Tobias Hauser. The course will run from the 20th of November until the 3rd of December and you can check out all of the great topics covered in this list posted to the training website.

PHPClasses.org has reviewed a new book today - "Professional Search Engine Optimization with PHP" from Wrox Publishing by Jaimie Sirovich and Cristian Darie.

This is a topic about which there is a lot to say, starting from the Google page rank algorithm, and what to do, as well what you should not do, to have your sites optimized to attract as many visitors as possible using search engine sites.

That is precisely the main topic of the book "Professional Search Engine Optimization with PHP". Despite the title mentions PHP, most of the knowledge presented in this book applies to all kinds of sites, independently if they are served by PHP code or not.

Manuel notes that the "PHP part" mostly has to do with the creation of dynamic sites and working with current PHP applications (like WordPress) to make them more search engine friendly.

Overall, this is an excellent book search engine optimization - SEO. It is very complete. [...] Whether or not you are familiar with the subject, if you are looking for good a book to learn all you need to know about SEO, this may be an excellent choice.