On the TutsPlus.com site there's a tutorial posted showing you how to get a Laravel application up and running quickly using the combination of GitHub, Linode and RunCloud.io.

If you are a PHP programmer working with the Laravel framework, I am sure that you deploy your web application on cloud servers on providers like Linode, Digital Ocean, Vultr and the rest. That’s because with a framework like Laravel, which works tightly with tools like Git and Composer, it is less and less likely that your application can be served from a shared hosting environment.

This article will show you how to set up your web server for your Laravel application on Linode cloud hosting using the RunCloud.io server management tool.

They then walk through the process of setting up a server on Linode including instance creation and Ubuntu image deployment. Once this is up and running, they take you over to RunCloud.io to connect your account to the Linode server (by IP address). Once the command is executed to link the two, they then show how to create the virtual host for your application and configure the deployment, DNS, domain name and SSL settings. Finally it shows the connection between RunCloud.io and GitHub, deploying the code when a git push action is taken.

The SitePoint PHP blog has a new post from Kirk Madera sharing some of the things he's learned about creating modules in Zend Expressive. His goal is to make it as easy as possible and enable "rapid development" in your application. This is the second part of a series on rapid development with Zend Expressive from Kirk (part one is here).

I have learned a few tricks when writing Zend Expressive modules that I want to share with you.

Please follow the previous post first to set up a proper working environment. I explained how to install and configure Zend Expressive with Doctrine, Gulp, and an abstract reflection factory – it’ll take a total of 10 minutes.

In this tutorial, we’ll build a simple read-only blog module (a page listing blog posts from a database) in minutes, demonstrating the kind of rapid development one is capable of with Zend Expressive.

He then shows how to use the command line tooling to create the module and how it is registered with Composer. He then shows the creation of the "blog" entity and database tables followed by the routing changes. Next he fleshes out the actions that will respond to the requests on each route and the templates that will be served as a part of the response.

The SitePoint PHP blog has posted a new tutorial from author Kirk Madera showing you how to use Zend Expressive to aid in more rapid development in your applications.

If you’ve ever done a Zend Framework quick start, you’ve probably never worked in Zend Framework. The quick start has historically been anything but quick, and it’s easy to lose interest and move on to the next thing.

Zend Expressive greatly improves upon this experience with the wizard driven composer create-project command. However, it can still be daunting to set up because there are so many choices to make up front. This tutorial guides you through my recommended setup for rapid development which will yield an enterprise level, robust application.

He then walks you through the creation of a Zend Expressive project from scratch and how to ensure it's up and running as expected. He then walks you through the structure of the application, software it includes (like Doctrine and Gulp) and examples of them in use. The post ends with a look at creating console commands using the Symfony Console component.

The Master Zend Framework site has posted a new tutorial showing you how to [use the ReflectionBasedAbstractFactory for prototyping](How To Do RAD Prototyping and Development With The ReflectionBasedAbstractFactory) and development in a Zend Framework 2 application.

Rapid application development isn't normally associated with Zend Framework. That's considered Laravel's domain. But thanks to the ReflectionBasedAbstractFactory, prototyping and rapid application development is now just as easy in Zend Framework as it is in Laravel. In today's tutorial, I'm going to show you how.

When using Zend ServiceManager, it's quite common to create a factory class for any class which require constructor dependencies. While tedious, it ensures we both follow development best practices and that the code we create is fully testable.

However, if we're not careful, it can lead to an enormous amount of factories — perhaps where we have one factory for every class. Needless to say, that can seriously hurt development. There needs to be a better way. And there is!

The ReflectionBasedAbstractFactory is included in the 3.2.0 release of Zend ServiceManager and makes use of the Reflection API to do some automagic, handy things. The article starts with some reasons why you might use it and a brief look at how it works. It also points out that, despite how it makes things easier on the developer it's "not for production" and instead relying on the other configuration handlers to help out.

Smartbridge.com has posted the first part of a series of articles looking at rapid development with WordPress and the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP).

As more and more people around the world have access to computers, laptops, tablets, and smartphones, these users are getting connected to the internet, ready to jump into the virtual world of unlimited and unrestrained information. Websites today are the most popular tool to deliver this vast information to an ever increasing audience. Let's talk about choices when it comes to rapidly developing custom non-enterprise websites.

He starts by eliminating some of the language alternatives off the bat because of either their lack of quality CMSes or complexity. He then moves on to Open Source options, focusing in on PHP for its low learning curve and popularity. There's a brief comparison of Drupal and WordPress, but it's pretty high level. He's saving the good parts of WordPress for the next part of the series.

In his most recent post Lukas Smith suggests that good design isn't an excuse for wasting time. He's basically saying that Symfony2, because of how it's designed and implemented, isn't a RAD (rapid application development) framework and that it's about time for some layers to be added to help get it there.

Symfony 1.x I would put into a category of frameworks focused on RAD, aka rapid application development. [...] So for those people who were happy focusing on the 80% use case Symfony2 is a step back. Suddenly the same features take longer to implement, take longer to modify later on and on top of that the learning curve is steeper.

He suggests that work be put into "RAD layers" that can sit on top of Symfony2 and provide some of the more familiar features people are used to from things like CakePHP, Yii and CodeIgniter. There's been a few tries to accomplish this with only one getting the closest in his opinion - the KnpBundle.

On PHPMaster.com today there's a a new tutorial helping you take some first steps with CakePHP, a popular full-stack PHP framework, by Vito Tardia.

CakePHP is a framework that provides a solid base for PHP development. It allows users at any skill level to rapidly develop robust web applications. [...] Personally, the reason why I prefer CakePHP over other PHP frameworks is its better support for console applications. CakePHP has a powerful console tool that can be customized to build applications for both the web and the console world. In this article I’ll introduce you to two of CakePHP’s most useful features: automatic code generation using the console tool Bake and dynamic scaffolding.

He walks you through the full (user friendly) installation and configuration, a few changes to increase security and where to go to set up your database connection. From there he shows how to use the "Bake" command to generate a "subscribers" model and automatically create the user interfaces to work with it (CRUD operations)

On NetTuts.com today there's a new tutorial posted about using a microframework for prototyping an application you may not need a full stack framework to get running. Their examples are based on the Slim framework.

Let’s face it: we all have great ideas for a web application. Whether you write them down on paper or remember them using your eidetic memory, there comes a point when you want test whether or not your idea is really viable. In this tutorial, we’ll use a micro framework, a templating language and an ORM to rapidly develop an application prototype.

There's an introduction to help you get Slim, some extras, Twig templating and Paris and Idorm set up and working happily together. There's code included for bootstrapping the application, creating a few routes, building models and using them to pull data from the database. They also create an "admin" area for their sample blog application, building an "add article" form and protecting it with a simple login system. You can download the source if you'd like to see it all working together.

Bradley Holt has a new post to his blog today talking about something he's a fan of in his development processes - rapid release cycles - and how something like the Zend Framework could benefit from it.

There has been some discussion recently on the Zend Framework mailing list around release cycles. I proposed a release cycle of six months for major versions (someone else suggested eighteen months, which may be more reasonable for a framework). Rapid releases allow one to accelerate the cycle of building, measuring, and learning. Gathering data from actual usage (measuring) provides an opportunity for learning that can be applied to the next release (building).

He points out that the post isn't specifically targeted at the Zend Framework project, merely that it was the inspiration point for the idea. He talks about what rapid release cycles are and what it can give the team that implements it - less worries about backwards compatibility breaks, a potential encouragement for development pacing and the ease for the customers doing upgrades.

A rapid release cycle allows you to apply new learning, knowledge, and perspective as often as possible. Do your best today, and give yourself opportunities to do your best in the future as well.

In this recent post on the Invoke Media blog Andrew Liem takes a look at the Zend Framework and shows how to create a simple site from install to execute.

This article is aimed at php developers who are looking to learn more about how not to reinvent the wheel, in particular, with the new Zend framework. This is not a comparative list of all php frameworks, as there are many good ones out there, CakePHP and Symphony to name two. I've evaluated other frameworks to some degree, not exhaustively by any means, and the Zend framework seems to fit nicely with my requirements. It may not for you, but I'll try to persuade you in this article

He introduces the framework first including a brief touch on MVC, the DOJO integration and its power and flexibility. From there he lists the tools you'll need to follow along with him, setting up the framework and creating a very simple site in it based on a pre-generated database (with the typical create/read/update/delete functionality).