Ondrej Mirtes has offered some advice in this Medium.com post sharing some of his experience in the development and management of his PHPStan project (static analysis for bug detection).

Most developers have side projects. That's how we try out new things or make something that we miss on the market or in our dev stack. But most side projects end up unfinished and never actually see the light of day. And even if a developer builds up the courage to show his work to the public, he quickly finds out that just publishing a repository doesn't actually bring the masses to his doorstep.

At the beginning of last December, I released PHPStan? - ?static analysis tool for PHP that focuses on finding bugs. The project gained a lot of traction resulting in currently over 1 300 stars on GitHub and more than 30 000 downloads on Packagist.

He spends the rest of the article sharing the things he did to make sure that the project "didn't end up in the dustbin of history" and be successful. Topics include:

• Build the hard stuff first
• Serve market needs
• Promotion
• Ask for money

He ends with what he sees as the most important part of any good open source project - as a maintainer you need to "be nice". This means being responsive to incoming feedback, keeping in mind that people contribute/comment because they care about the project (and it's not usually about you).

A while back Alan Forbes started a Kickstarter project to write a PHP book, "The Joy of PHP". This book was targeted at those that wanted to learn PHP and "have some fun along the way". The book has been finished and, in a special promotion, is being offered free of charge through Amazon and for the next five days.

The book "The Joy of PHP" by Alan Forbes now available as a Kindle book on Amazon.com. Starting today (or tomorrow, depending on Amazon) and lasting only 5 days the book will be absolutely free. The only "catch" is that the author is asking for reviews. In other words, once you've taken a look a the book please go back to the book listing on Amazon and give it a star rating from 1 to 5 to help the author build momentum for the book.

You can find out more about the book on its website and, if you don't want the Kindle version, pick up a copy of the PDF version for just $12 USD.

UPDATE: the free offer for this book has been extended and is available for no cost for a limited time!

New on the Blue Parabola blog today is Matthew Turland's latest article in his in-depth look at the features the Magento e-commerce application offers. This time he focuses on the promotions and tools that it includes for marketing the site you have installed.

The majority of the features listed in this area have already been covered in this series. As such, sections for those features in this post are simply linked to other posts where appropriate.

Topics mentioned include:

• Coupons
• Multi-Tier Pricing
• Customer Group-specific Pricing and Group-specific Tier Pricing
• Search Engine Friendly URLs
• New Items Promotional Tool

See the the full post for the complete list (some of which have been mentioned before).

php|architect has posted their November and December training class schedule online today that includes all of their courses:

• PHP Essentials
• PHP Certification Combo
• Professional PHP
• Building Rich Internet Applications With PHP 5 and AJAX

Classes start at around $770 USD and, as an extra incentive, their iPod Touch promotion is still going on. Order any training class and get a free iPod Touch delivered right to your door. Only training purchased between September 18th and November 30th of 2007 are eligible, so be sure to get your order in in time!

php|architect has posted their November and December training class schedule online today that includes all of their courses:

• PHP Essentials
• PHP Certification Combo
• Professional PHP
• Building Rich Internet Applications With PHP 5 and AJAX

Classes start at around $770 USD and, as an extra incentive, their iPod Touch promotion is still going on. Order any training class and get a free iPod Touch delivered right to your door. Only training purchased between September 18th and November 30th of 2007 are eligible, so be sure to get your order in in time!

php|architect has a reminder today about their iPod Training promotion for and of their PHP training classes.

You still have time, until December 31st, to sign up for one of our popular PHP training classes and receive a free 30GB iPod Video in a colour of your choice.

You can get a full list and signup for the training classes on the main training site for php|architect.

php|architect has announced the return of their free iPod Video with the purchase of every training class promotion. The promotion applies to any of the three courses they offer:

• PHP Essentials
• Zend PHP 5 Certification Training
• Professional PHP Development

This year, to celebrate the launch of our new training website (as well as the new PHP 5 versions of our PHP Essentials and Zend Certification courses), we're upping the ante, and giving away a free iPod Video 30GB with every online training purchase!

You can get complete details for the promotion and the training classes offered from the official promotion page on the php|architect website.

php|architect has announced the return of their free iPod Video with the purchase of every training class promotion. The promotion applies to any of the three courses they offer:

• PHP Essentials
• Zend PHP 5 Certification Training
• Professional PHP Development

This year, to celebrate the launch of our new training website (as well as the new PHP 5 versions of our PHP Essentials and Zend Certification courses), we're upping the ante, and giving away a free iPod Video 30GB with every online training purchase!

You can get complete details for the promotion and the training classes offered from the official promotion page on the php|architect website.

According to this new press release, PerlCoders and PHP Labs have joined forces and become one and, to share the love with others, they're offering discounts on their offerings.

Over the last week, PerlCoders and PHP Labs have merged to offer even more professional scripts to their clients. To celebrate this merger, they are now offering a one-time special promotion for webmasters, which can save them over $300. As a small incentive for new members, PHP Labs is also offering free installation for the first script of your choice.

The press release goes on to talk about what each is bringing to the table and what they're offering from now on. The $300 promotion goes towards a membership for the site, giving you access to all 44 scripts without paying extra. Examples of the scripts include GalleryMaker, ProxyCheck, FileMailer, and CashMail. You can get more information from the promotion's page on their website.