On the SitePoint PHP blog editor Bruno Skvorc has posted a tutorial showing how to combine Git and WordPress to make it easier to update posts on the site via pull requests.

At Bitfalls.com, we also use WordPress for now, and use the same peer review approach for content as we do at SitePoint.

We decided to build a tool which automatically pulls content from merged pull requests into articles, giving us the ability to fix typos and update posts from Github, and see the changes reflected on the live site. This tutorial will walk you through the creation of this tool, so you can start using it for your own WordPress site, or build your own version.

He starts by outlining the plan for the process including some of the functionality that will be put to use - like WPGlobus and Markdown files. He then walks you through the creation of an environment for the end WordPress installation (for testing), creates the webhook on the GitHub side to handle the push and the code needed to grab the content and push it into WordPress. He also includes an example of the workflow, showing a PR being created and merged to ensure the flow is functioning as expected.

On the Eleven Labs blog they're posted a tutorial showing you how to integrate RabbitMQ functionality into your Symfony-based application making use of a few handy tools that do some of the heavy lifting for you and how messages are handled (and what to do when they error).

RabbitMQ is a message broker, allowing to process things asynchronously. There’s already an article written about it, if you’re not familiar with RabbitMQ.

What I’d like to talk to you about is the lifecycle of a message, with error handling. Everything in a few lines of code. Therefore, we’re going to configure a RabbitMQ virtual host, publish a message, consume it and retry publication if any error occurs.

They use the RabbitMQ admin toolkit and Swarrot packages to get the job done. First up is the configuration of the tools, creating a default_vhost.yml file defining a queue and setting up the exchanges and parameters for the default route ("/"). They show an example of what the RabbitMQ UI looks like with this new exchange up and working and how to get more information about this "default" queue. Next up is the consumption and publication of messages. They include an example app/config/config.yml file that defines some settings the Swarrot library (via the SwarrotBundle) needs to understand the connections, consumers and type of provider to use. Finally he shows the configuration so it all knows how to publish messages and a quick example of PHP code that sends a simple string message to be handled by the RabbitMQ workers. The post ends with a bit more configuration and some examples of how to handle errors in this Swarrot/RabbitMQ Admin Toolkit setup and making use of some middleware to help with message retries and number of attempts.

The latest issue of the Web & PHP Magazine has been published - Issue #10. This issue can be downloaded for free and has articles about:

• Building an Identity Extraction Engine in PHP (Jonathan LeBlanc)
• 5 Deadly Programming Sins (Michael Stowe)
• Physical Security Fail (Arne Blankerts)
• Database Indexing (Cory Isaacson)

You can also download previous issues of the magazine for free after registering or logging in to your account.

The latest issue of the Web & PHP Magazine has been released - Issue 8 - The Power of Design. Articles in this latest issue include:

• Todd Lombardo on user context
• Stefan Priebsch on data and persistence
• Patrick Allaert about data structures
• June Henriksen on the human side of programming

You can find out more about this issue (and go download your free copy) on the Web & PHP site. There's also seven previous issues, all free for download (PDF format)!

The latest issue of the Web & PHP Magazine has been published - Issue #7, "Full Throttle". Articles included in this issue are:

• Introduction into scaling for Big Data: Cory Isaacson's new column
• What can developers learn from the road? - By Arne Blankerts
• How to be an open source rockstar in 7 easy steps - By Jen Kramer
• PHP security for the real world - By Michael Stowe
• Developing Web Applications in Haskell - By Patrick Brisbin
• Speed up your applications using IIS & WinCache - By Arno Hollosi

You can download this latest issue for free as a PDF as well as picking up the past 6 issues with some great PHP-related content inside.

The latest issue of Web & PHP Magazine has been published - Issue 6, "Breaking New Ground". In this latest edition, articles include:

• "Social Authentication with Zend Framework 2" by Nicholas Calugar
• "A modern approach to object creation in JavaScript" by Marco Emrich
• Sebastian Bergmann discussing reliability in software engineering
• Scriptable sockets with ZeroMQ by Louren Naude

You can download this latest issue for free from the Web & PHP site and pick up the other previous issues while you're there!

The Web & PHP Magazine has published its latest issue, number 4, available for free download. Content in this month's issue include:

• The "#Trending" column (hot and not in the PHP+web communities)
• An interview with Matthew Weier O’Phinney
• A wrapup of the International PHP Conference Spring 2012
• Arne Blankerts on password handling
• HTML5 Security considerations

Additionally, starting with this issue, you can also download previous issues of the magazine on their iPad application (for $0.99 per issue). The standard PDFs of each issue are still available for free, however. You can get this latest issue here.

O'Reilly Publishing has just released a new PHP book for those looking to get to the "heart of the language" the fastest - PHP: The Good Parts.

Get past all the hype about PHP and dig into the real power of the language. This book explores the most useful features of PHP and how they can speed up the web development process, and explains why the most commonly used PHP elements are often misused or misapplied. You'll learn which parts add strength to object-oriented programming, and how to use certain features to integrate your application with databases.

You can see the full table of contents on their page for the book including beginner topics like functions and variables all the way out to security, advanced goodies and PHP 5.3.

Rob Morgan has submtted a recent post from his blog that shows how to create and deploy a PEAR package for your application onto the new Pearhub repository.

You might be wondering what is Pearhub? From Pearhub.org - 'Pearhub is a pear channel and a pear package publishing platform. As a user, you can install packages. As a developer, you can publish packages'. You can read Troels Knak-Nielsen's introductory blog post here: http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2010/01/08/introducing-pearhub.

You'll need an OpenID, an account on github and know how to use git on your system to get everything packaged up and ready to go. You create your app locally, make a github repository for it and set up a pearhub account to point to it. With all of that set up, it's as easy as doing a channel-discover on the pearhub server and running the "pear install" on the package. The rest is done for you!

Padraic Brady has posted about the art of deception that several publishers have involved themselves in - already publishing books about PHP6.

I was strolling around a bookstore today, Easons on O'Connell Street here in Dublin, when I found myself staring at a bookshelf in near shock. Kid, I thought, you've been out of the loop for only two months and somehow those crazy people have managed to release PHP 6 right under your nose! [...] The more I stared at the three youthful faces grinning at me from the cover, the more I convinced myself this was a publishing error. No way was PHP6 going to be released without me noticing. Google Reader would have been on fire with that news. So what the hell was I looking at? I was apparently looking at a big fat lie.

He goes on to talk about PHP6 (aka the "long standing grail" of PHP) and how publishers, apparently misinformed as to the release date of the version, preempted its release and assumed that it would be out as soon as or before the book was. Obviously this was the wrong choice and now they're paying for it with the egg on their face.

Sure these PHP6 books have a lot of the PHP 5.3 features mentioned in them, but they're mashed up with other features that won't be ready until PHP6 actually arrives. Oddly enough, upon looking at the contents of most of the books, Padraic discovered something interesting - their content is less about PHP6 and more about the PHP 5.2 series that was current. Seems they're only really PHP6 in name.