Phil Sturgeon shows how you can hijack headers in his latest post to force a download to the client (even on a hosted service like PagodaBox).

The question [I posed on Twitter] was: "How to force a download of any file of any type, not on your server, without Apache tweaking? Images are displaying and need em to download." Essentially, I wanted to be able to link to a file that was not on the server in question and anywhere in the world, which could be of any size, any media type and could be potentially very high traffic.

Answers varied from using readfile to just letting the browser handle it. None of the responses were quick right until he came across one that recommended some settings in an .htaccess file. It uses

On PHPMaster.com there's a new post by Michelle Sanver about The PHP People, a.k.a the PHP community, and some of the great resources you can use to get help on a problem or just reach out and meet some other PHP-ers in your area (or at a national conference!)

If you're ever stuck on a problem, Google it and you'll find a swarm of users have most likely experienced the same issue and have already shared their solution. If it's not out there, ask in a public forum and people will help you find the answer. And if you've managed to solve it yourself, then write about it! That way you'll be contributing to helping others the same way others are willing to help you. That's one part of the PHP community that makes it really stand out - people share their knowledge and are more than willing to help others along their journey with PHP.

Some resources/places to meet like-minded developers include:

• StackOverflow
• Conferences like PFCongres 2011 or PHPNW 11
• Groups like PHPWomen or local user groups

The community in PHP is huge and is growing every day, and it's all about sharing. If you see someone in need and you're able to help, offer him guidance. If you see an open-source project that's great; contribute and help it grow.

In a new post to his blog Kevin Schroeder asks a simple question - why do you use PHP?

In one or two words, please comment to answer this question. Why do you use PHP?

So far, answers have included "the large community", "ease of development", "portability", "versatility" and the "power" the language offers. Leave your own comment on the post to share your thoughts with Kevin and others in the community.

Most developers have heard of "The Joel Test" to help improve the quality of their software and the processes surrounding it. Joshua Thijssen has taken this one step further and created his own set of questions to act as a test for software development managers to make sure they're doing the right things for their group.

This post is not so much for developers as it is for the managers and bosses from those developers. As you probably know by now, managing software engineers (or programmers) is not an easy task. They just don't like to play by the rules you always took for granted. Why is that? Why are those pesky programmers too hard to handle? Why is it so hard to sit down, write code and shut up??

The questions are yes/no and, at the end of the test, your questions will be assigned to points from 0 to 12. Here's just a few of the questions (they all come with summaries to help you understand what its asking):

• Do you work with lenient working hours?
• Do you give enough time for planning?
• Do you enforce an IDE?
• Are your programmers in the loop?
• Do you have enough distraction for programmers?

From LearnComputer.com there's a few hints they've put together that might help you with that next PHP-related job interview.

So you've been slinging resumes for a while and now you have an interview for an awesome PHP job. While part of the interview will be the typical job interview, you should also be prepared for a technical interview. Technical interviews are often given to determine how well you truly know the technologies with which you'll be working. There are numerous books and articles to help you prepare for the job interview portion but very little has been said on preparing for a PHP technical interview.

They've broken down their advice into a few different sections including some sample PHP questions you might get asked about both PHP and MySQL, a quick look at frameworks and the recommendation of the book PHP and MySQL Web Development to help round out your knowledge.

Kevin Schroeder has posted his second part of his thoughts on building better PHP programmers - things developers can do to move from the average to exceptional in their skills.

I have no "findings", no "conclusions", but I have some thoughts on my continuing goal to help bad/nominal PHP programmers become better PHP programmers.

He talks about the questions he asked in his previous post (like "is there a shortage of good programmers" and the requirements on memorizing) and some of the responses both for and against them. He stands by several of them, noting that, which a developer may not know the whole story, they should at least know enough.

One of the things I've also found a little interesting is that there is some resistance to standards. The argument goes; developers get better by different means and so having something set in stone to evaluate them is difficult, nigh impossible, to do

In a quick blog post today Stuart Herbert asks the community at large a question - should is_array accept an ArrayObject?

Here's a quick question for the wider PHP programming community '¦ if you're writing code that tests for the presence of an array, should is_array() also accept objects that behave like arrays?

Some quick code snippets show that, currently in PHP 5.2, an is_array test will return false. If you use an instanceof to check it, however, you can get it to return true. There's plenty of comments on the subject with quite a few "no"s in the group.

If you've been looking for a good way to get introduced to the latest version of the Zend Framework but didn't know where to start, you might grab a spot in this upcoming webinar from Zend about the Zend Framework 1.10.

Zend Framework 1.10 sports a ton of new features, as well as completely revamped online documentation. In this webinar, Matthew Weier O'Phinney, Framework Project Lead, and Ralph Schindler, Zend Framework Software Engineer, will present a synopsis of the new features, discuss the new online documentation system and how it's built, and answer your questions about the new release.

The webinar will be happening this coming Wednesday, March 17th, at 9am PST and will be happening via WebEx. Matthew Weier O'Phinney and Ralph Schindler will be talk about the new features, current functionality that was enhanced and will answer your burning questions. To reserve your spot, head over to the registration page and enter your info.

If you're looking around for software to fill the needs of your company or group and your sights fall on Open Source software, Builder.com.au has a few suggestions for you to consider.

All open source projects, by definition, provide the end user with certain perpetual rights and freedoms in using, studying, modifying and redistributing the product. However, there is a lot of inconsistency in terms of the product quality, the governance model and the availability of support. Thus, when selecting open source components for your enterprise, it is important to do some background checks to ensure the open source product you have selected is compatible with your enterprise business model and IT standards. Below are 10 questions you can ask to evaluate open source maturity.

Among things on their list to consider are:

• Are the open source licence terms compatible with my business requirements?
• How well is the product adopted by users?
• How is this project governed and how easily can I influence the road map?
• Will the product scale to my enterprise's requirements?
• Are there regular security patches?

Following some of his recent experience in finding a new source of employment, Brandon Savage has shared some of the common questions he was given during his search for a PHP development position.

There are a large number of PHPers looking for jobs right now. After having just gone through the process myself, I wanted to put together some of the most common PHP interview questions. These questions are all non-technical, but do represent the soft side of PHP interviewing. I cannot help you if you don't have the technical skills to answer the technical questions, but answering these questions correctly is often the key to making or breaking your chances with an interviewer who otherwise has fine technical candidates.

Questions he was asked included "How did you get into PHP?", "Where do you ultimately want to be in life?" and the more random "How many gas stations are there in Los Angeles?". For each, Brandon recommends a few tips on dealing with them and includes some possible tactics on answering.