On the Eakat blog they've written up a post showing you how to get the scanner up and running quickly on your system and start performing scans of the code based on their ruleset.

Exakat is a smart static analysis engine for PHP. It reviews the code fast and produces reports tailored for every needs : issues and code smell for programmers, inventories and maps for architect ; compilation and configurations lists for sys admins ; dashboards for team leaders. Including over 320 analysis and spanning versions from 5.2 to currently WIP 7.2, it helps you audit your code and keep it under control. Let’s see how to get up and running exakat in 15 mins.

The post then walks you through the installation process and defines some prerequisites you'll need before getting started. The Exakat installation is basically just grabbing a phar archive from the exakat.io server. Once it's installed they show you how to run your first scans and view the resulting output. The guide also shows you how to add additional options to the reporting and the command to update Exakat itself.

The Laravel News podcast, with host Eric Barnes, has posted their latest episode today, Episode #3 - Laravel Quickstart Tutorials:

In this episode of the Laravel News Podcast, we discuss the new Laravel quick start guides, features coming to Laravel 5.2, Elixir and Bootstrap, Developer interruptions and more!

He also talks about a Laravel tagging package, forcing complex passwords in Laravel apps and an article from Ryan Winchester about forcing password requirements on users, even if it's more secure than your requirements. You can listen to this latest episode either through the in-page audio player or you can subscribe on iTunes to pull down the show and listen at your leisure.

On the Ibuildings blog today they've posted the most recent episode from their recordings at the Dutch PHP Conference (2012) with Enrico Zimual's talk A Quickstart on Zend Framework 2.

In this talk we will present a simple web application built with Zend Framework 2. We will show the new features of the framework, such as the new MVC layer, the Event Manager, the Dependency Injection and much more. The aim of this talk is how to start programming with the new architecture of ZF2. Moreover, we will show the differences with the version 1 of the framework and how to migrate applications from ZF1 to ZF2.

You can listen to this latest episode either via the in-page player, by downloading the mp3 or by subscribing to get this and future episodes.

Matthew Weier O'Phinney has put together a screencast showing you how to get up and running (a quickstart) with the latest release of Zend Framework 2.

One of the exciting features of the newly released Zend Framework 2 is the new module system. While ZF1 had modules, they were difficult to manage. [...] In Zend Framework 2, we've architected the MVC from the ground up to make modular applications as easy as possible. [...] To give you an example, in this tutorial, I'll show you how to install the Zend Framework 2 skeleton application, and we'll then install a module and see how easy it is to add it to the application and then configure it.

The screencast (also viewable over on Vimeo) talks you through all the steps in the process, but the code is also provided in the post along with screenshots of how the application should look at various steps.

In this most recent post to his blog Alex Hudson says a "fond goodbye" to using the Zend Framework for his applications after trying out some of the functionality that's in Zend Framework version 2:

I've been a Zend Framework user for a while. I've been using PHP long enough to appreciate the benefits of a good framework, and developed a number of sophisticated applications using ZF, to have grown a certain fondness for it. [...] That said, I actually don't feel like much of what I'm about to say is unfair, for one simple reason: I have tried to like ZF 2.0. [...] I got quite happy with ZF1, and indeed approached ZF2 with the idea that it would take a similar amount of effort to learn to like it. I have attempted to apply that effort. I have failed.

He goes on to talk about some of the things that he found that he doesn't like about this upcoming version of the framework, including:

• the lack of an interesting demo to show off what ZF2 can really do
• the almost "koolaid" approach ZF2 approaches dependency injection with
• some references to "Java mentality" that seems to be creeping into the framework

In a new post to his blog Ulf Wendel has pointed out that the mysqlnd query cache plugin quickstart is posted on the docs.php.net site.

New in the PHP manual: a quickstart for the mysqlnd query cache plugin. PECL/mysqlnd_qc, the mysqlnd query cache plugin, is transparent and ease to use. But, how? Some pointers have been given in assorted presentations, here on my blog and in some, few examples from the manual. Fixed. You can now browse a quickstart to gain a quick overview.

The query cache plugin can replace the query caching MySQL does and can help with things like multiple storage options (memory, APC, Memcache, etc) and almost no changes to your application. There's also a method (mysqlnd_qc_get_query_trace_log) that comes with the plugin that gives you a "stack trace" of every query run through the MySQL interface.

Ulf Wendel has a new post to his blog pointing out the new mysqli quickstart that's been added to the PHP manual.

New in the PHP manual: a mysqli quickstart. You are new to PHP but you know how to code, you know SQL, you know relational databases and MySQL? Then, I hope, this is for you. All you need is a quick overview on the concepts? The rest is in the reference section! Here you go.

It includes sections on:

• making connections
• executing statements
• stored procedures
• multiple statements

Josh Adell has posted a quick start guide to getting your application up and running on the PHPFog PHP platform as a service offering.

Being it was Christmas and all, I decided to give myself a present and sign up. I was very surprised by how easy it was to get up and running. I managed to build a simple "echo" service in about i.8 minutes, following roughly these steps.

It was as simple as "launching" a new custom application, waiting for it to become available, cloning the git repository and setting up a simple app. In his case , it's a basic Silex-based app that makes a simple site to greet users with a "Hello world" message. Throw in a basic .htaccess file and the app is all set to push.

For anyone looking to get started helping on the Zend Framework 2 project but not sure where to begin, Robert Basic has some recommendations of places to look.

OK, here are some tips and resources so you can start helping out and contributing to Zend Framework 2.0.

Things on the list include:

• a getting started page on the ZF wiki
• Fixing unit tests on the framework
• working on the port of ZendService
• Porting patches from ZF1 to ZF2
• Check out the quickstart on github to get the ball rolling

Michael Kimsal has put together a Zend Framework starter kit currently posted over on github here.

Feel free to fork it and send me pull requests. There’s a load of things I’d like to do to/with it, including a default basic authentication and user mgt system, a basic forms generator, some menu stuff on the side, and some other small stuff. It’s got Doctrine built-in, and ready to go with a sample book/author object set, although no sample *data* yet, nor any examples of how to use the code specifically. Maybe I’ll add some of that soon.

The ZFKit brings helps you get started quickly by giving you an example of a site that combines Doctrine, PHPUnit and the Zend Framework into one "ready to go" bundle.