On the Pineco.de blog they've posted a tutorial showing how to use Guzzle to subscribe users to a Mailchimp mailing list in a Laravel application. The technique isn't specific to a Laravel application and can be adapted relatively easily for other framework/application types.

Managing users and mailing lists are not a that painful nowadays. Since we have excellent services that can cover all the needs we have, we don’t need to worry about it too much. But still, let’s take a look at how can we handle user subscriptions when Laravel fires different events.

In the tutorial, the request is sent to Mailchimp via the user registration event fired when a new user signs up for the site. They include the code to create the listener and register it in the Laravel configuration. They've also included the code that will be used when the event is fired, sending a message to the Mailchimp API with a "subscribed" status and the user information.

One of the comments that we get here on PHPDeveloper.org is that it's hard to keep up with all of the posts each day and not miss anything. For those on Twitter, we do auto-post to the @phpdeveloper Twitter account but not everyone is on Twitter. There's also our RSS feed for those that are more feed-inclined but there's been a piece missing.

If RSS feeds or Twitter weren't really your thing, you'd need to visit the site regularly just to see all of the posts. Not everyone has time for that so we're introducing yet another method that you, our loyal readers, can get the latest news from the PHP community: the PHPDeveloper.org Newsletter.

The goal, at least for the initial version of the newsletter, is to provide links to all of the stories that have been posted during the week delivered directly to your inbox. Don't worry, neither the RSS feed or our Twitter account are going away - this is just an additional something to make getting the news you want even easier.

Sign up for the newsletter and you'll receive a weekly digest of all of the news posted during the week right here on PHPDeveloper.org.

Christoph Rumpel has continued his series covering the creation of a chatbot using the Botman package in a new post to his site. The latest post, part three in the series, builds on the base created in parts one and two and integrates the bot with his project website.

In part one and two we created a Facebook Messenger chatbot that let your users subscribe to your newsletter. We stored that information in the database and sent out our first newsletter. In the last third part, we integrate this bot to a website and write our first tests.

He then walks you through the process of using the Facebook Customer Chat Plugin to integrate it into the site (using the Facebook JavaScript SDK). He includes instructions on whitelisting your domain and including the plugin into the site's source using a few custom configuration options. With the integration complete he then takes a step back and shows the creation of several tests evaluating the fallback handling and subscription conversation responses.

Nicola Malizia has written up a post showing you how to create a Telegram bot using Laravel and the BotMan package. BotMan is a project that seeks to make it easier to work with chat commands directly in an application with some handy tools included.

After a long time I’m here to talk about Telegram bots. Lately, I discovered a nice PHP library for building Telegram Bots and I want now to show you it’s potential? - ?BotMan.

BotMan is a framework agnostic PHP library that is designed to simplify the task of developing innovative bots for multiple messaging platforms, including Slack, Telegram, Microsoft Bot Framework, Nexmo, HipChat, Facebook Messenger, WeChat and many more.

The best part of this library is that you can integrate with Laravel, thus taking benefit of the vast ecosystem around it.

He then walks you through the installation of the BotMan package and creation of a simple "Hello world" kind of bot. He then shows how to install the driver for the Telegram. He then shows how to connect the bot to Telegram, execute it and expose it to the world via ngrok and how to test it out. He finishes the post with a more real world situation: creating a bot that allows users to subscribe and receive broadcasts when an announcement is made.

The Web Development Blog has a tutorial posted showing how to add a Mailchimp "subscribe" feature to your current contact forms. They make use of the MailChimp API wrapper library to make the calls back to the service and subscribe the user at their request.

MailChimp is a great email marketing service provider with an easy to use control panel and features like: campaign management (RSS-driven, A/B Split, Plain-text and regular), statistics, auto-responder and a complete set of list management tools. They offer different ways to place a subscriber form on your website or blog. If you to like add the MailChimp subscribe feature to your existing contact form you need to add some custom code.

They start with a few things you'll need to do to prepare for the connection including the setup of an API key to make the request. He provides a simple "Contact Us" form for reference and the code needed on submit to validate the input and make the subscription call to the API with the email the user provided. He also includes a bit of response handling.

[php]architect magazine has made a big announcement today in response to one major request they've received - the magazine is once again available in a print version!

"Are you going to bring the magazine back to print?" It's the #1 question on everyone's minds. Since musketeers.me first acquired php[architect] at the beginning of 2013, it is the one question that we have constantly been asked. While digital publishing is the future, people still love the feeling of having a printed magazine in hand.

Knowing that our customers wanted it, we've worked hard to figure out a way that we could bring the magazine back to print again. We are extremely excited today to announce that starting with the November 2013 issue, php[architect] will once again be printed!

The print subscription will come in at $119 USD for a year's worth of magazines. They've also updated all current customers to a combined Digital level that includes all three major formats (PDF, ePub and Mobi). You can get more information about your current subscription level by logging in or, if you want to sign up now, check out the subscription information.

In a new post to his blog Matthew Weier O'Phinney shares a simple publish-subscribe system he's created based on a feature of the Dojo toolkit using the Zend Framework to create an easy notification architecture.

The system has elements of Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP), as well as the Observer pattern. Its power, however, is in the fact that an individual object does not need to implement any specific interface in order to act as either a Subject or an Observer; the system is globally available.

The script creates an object that publishes an event. This event then sends off messages to all of the other objects subscribing to it. A code example is included. You also can check out the code from its page on github (as a part of his Phly libraries) and play with it yourself.

The PHPWomen have posted a reminder about the mailing list that they're going to "dust off" and start using again (and suggest you do too!).

There's just the one list currently (as hosted by omniti) but there's lots of subscribers. You can check out the signup page for more information on the list and get access to some of the archives of previous topics.

The PHPWomen have posted a reminder about the mailing list that they're going to "dust off" and start using again (and suggest you do too!).

There's just the one list currently (as hosted by omniti) but there's lots of subscribers. You can check out the signup page for more information on the list and get access to some of the archives of previous topics.

The folks over at php|architect have made an important announcement concerning something that might have kept you away from subscribing to them in the past - they're dropping the DRM.

It seems a little strange to say (or write) it out loud, but, this month, php|architect turns five! To celebrate the release of our sixtieth issue (which was actually November), we have decided to remove all password protection from the PDFs you download from our sites (that is, both php|architect and Pymag).

Marco Tabini (publisher of the magazine) explained some of the reasoning behind the shift as fixing something that "has become a liability for us and a nuisance for our readers". They've made it so that not only will the future issues coming out of the group be password-less but you can also redownload the older issues without the password they previously had.

If you haven't gotten a chance to check out this great PHP-centered publication, check out their free issue to get an idea of what they have in store. Subscribing is easy - just check out their options and pick the one that's right for you - either print or PDF!