As Vinu Thomas has noted, the latest stable version of the WordPress blogging software has been released - WordPress 2.6.

From the Twitter feed of Matt Mullenweg:

I’m happy to announce that version 2.6 of WordPress.org is now available, almost a month ahead schedule. Version 2.6 "Tyner," named for jazz pianist McCoy Tyner, contains a number of new features that make WordPress a more powerful CMS: you can now track changes to every post and page and easily post from wherever you are on the web, plus there are dozens of incremental improvements to the features introduced in version 2.5.

You can check out some of the new functionality in the video included in Vinu's post and you can grab this latest download from the main WordPress website.

At the recently passed Dutch PHP Conference 2008, the Bachelor-ict.nl website brought along their cameras and interviewed some of the attendees and speakers. Here's who they caught:

• Lorna Mitchell (advocating women to get into PHP and the PHP Women group)
• Ivo Jansch's talk
• An interview with Zeev Suraski
• A talk with Marco Tabini of php|architect
• Their own general overview of the conference itself.

Check out all of the videos from Bachelor-ict.nl's list on the Vimeo website.

Syllogistic has released a series of PHP tutorials on video to help you learn the language:

What's the best way to learn a new skill like PHP programming? By spending days reading a boring technical book? Or perhaps sifting through hundreds of small web tutorials - some outdated, or even just wrong. Of course not! The best way to learn is by watching someone who really knows what they're doing, and then following their example!

Unfortunately, the videos aren't free, but they're only about $50 CDN and cover all of the topics you'll need to get started with PHP:

• Programming for the Web
• Arrays
• Loops
• Functions
• and how to tie it all together.

You can find out more about the videos on their site as well as place your order

On his blog today, Stefan Mischook has posted a new video tutorial showing how to hook together one of the more popular web development combinations on the internet - PHP and MySQL.

I've gotten around to releasing a new set of beginners video tutorials on PHP. This time around, I have a four part video on how to get PHP to talk to MySQL.

All four parts are there, bundled into a Flash presentation. Note: these are not installation tutorials - they only show how to get PHP talking to the MySQL backend, not how to set them up together.

In this first article of a new series on the IBM developerWorks site introduces you to their method for creating your own "on-demand video website" with PHP:

In Part 1 of a three-part series on creating an on-demand video site with PHP, we begin by looking at the different flavors of digital video and their particular nuances. When creating video for the Web, the overarching issue you need to keep in mind is whether you want your video to be small and easy to download or whether you want it to be the best quality possible.

They'll also show you how to convert the video into the Flash Video format to make it easy to pull into an in-page Flash player. You'll need to register or log in to get to the article.

Stefan Mischook has posted the second part of the video tutorial introduction to making a Zend Framework application:

This Zend Framework video is from our resident Zend-nerd: Jon Lebensold. Again, let us know what you think and should you have any suggestions or request, please feel free to comment.

Part one was posted back on Tuesday for those that need to catch up.

Stefan Mischook has just posted a new video in his set of PHP-related presentations - part one of a look at setting up the MVC structure in a Zend Framework application.

This video is a little more basic than the previous Zend videos.

The video runs about twelve minutes long and covers the use of the Framework to post information back to a page and insert some of the information back into the database.

Stefan Mischook has released his latest tutorial covering OOP in PHP in a bit more iPod-friendly format:

I just released my beginners object oriented php video tutorials in iPod format. These videos target total beginners to object oriented programing. Though I talk about PHP, the principles are universal and so they apply to all OO (object oriented) languages.

Tutorial in the list include:

• Beginners Object Oriented PHP
• Classes and Objects in PHP
• Building Objects in PHP - Part 1 & 2
• Build Objects in PHP - Part 3

Check out these and other great videos on the KillerPHP.com website.

Stefan Mischook has pointed out a new section of the video tutorial portion of the site that's strictly devoted to help using the .

Videos that have already been posted to the section include setup videos part one and two as well as a look at working with the Zend_Controller and Zend_View components.

According to the O'Reilly Port 25 blog, there's been a new release of the FastCGI component for Microsoft's IIS web server - FastCGI 6.0 - and how it works with things other than IIS7 and Windows Server 2008.

f you read Sam Raimi's How open source has influenced Windows Server 2008 and Dominic Sartorio's Dominic Sartorio on SpikeSource and Open Source Interoperability blog entries on Microsoft's Port 25 site, you might wonder if FastCGI for PHP only works with Windows Server 2008 and IIS7. Fortunately, that is NOT the case. Head over to http://iis.net/php where you can find and download FastCGI for IIS 6.0 on Windows Server 2003.

He also points out a video tutorial from Microsoft that can help you get this latest version og FasctCGI up and running on your system.