In this new article from Noupe.com they look at a hot topic in the PHP community - frameworks - and give an overview of the features of five popular choices.

PHP is the world's most popular scripting language for many different reasons - flexibility, ease-of-use, among others - but often times coding in PHP, or any language for that matter, can get rather monotonous and repetitive. That's where a PHP framework can help. [...] Frameworks can also help beginners to build more stable apps by ensuring proper database interaction and coding on the presentation layer. This allows you to spend more time creating the actual web application, instead of spending time writing repetitive code.

They touch on why you should use a framework and when are appropriate times to make them a part of your development. They also point out a few common mistakes that are often made when using frameworks like using a framework above your skill level or ensuring that all other technologies will work with your framework of choice.

They finish the article off with a look at the features of five different frameworks:

• Zend Framework
• CakePHP
• Symfony
• CodeIgniter
• Seagull

PHPBuilder.com is starting off a new series today that, if you're new to the PHP language, aims to teach you everything you might need to know to get up to speed. Today they've posted the first article in the series, an introduction to the author (Peter Shaw) and a mention of what PHP can do for you.

In this 10 part series, I'm going to take you through the basics of PHP and hopefully give you a taste of what such a versatile language can do. I am not, however, going to preach that PHP is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I'll let you decide that for yourself!

He introduces himself first, talking about some of his past experience with PHP and other various languages. He then goes on to talk about where PHP came from, a high-level look at how it works in both the web and command-line environments.

According to this new post from Scott Mattocks today, there's a new article in a new section of the php|archtiect site detailing the evolution of PHP-GTK.

The article looks at PHP-GTK from its humblest beginnings (the filesystem functions) out to what it is and what it's used for. There's also a brief discussion of where it's headed as well, including links to a few different resources on the topic.

According to this new post from Scott Mattocks today, there's a new article in a new section of the php|archtiect site detailing the evolution of PHP-GTK.

The article looks at PHP-GTK from its humblest beginnings (the filesystem functions) out to what it is and what it's used for. There's also a brief discussion of where it's headed as well, including links to a few different resources on the topic.

With a follow-up to Chris Shiflett's post on the "insecurity of PHP", Marco Tabini has voiced his opinion over on his blog as well.

Via Chris' blog, I came across this posting that discusses the perceived lack of security in PHP. Others have already made excellent points in response to the author's claims—which, basically, boil down to the fact that he seems to confuse security with a limitation in functionality.

What? Is he serious? Well, yes—and for one simple reason: security means different things to different people. The level of input filtering that may be needed for my software does not necessarily fit the requirements of other people's needs. The goal of the language is to remain as simple, powerful and efficient as possible. It is then up to the developer to determine the level of additional functionality that he requires and implement it—and that includes security.

He goes on mentioning things like the Zend Framework and eZ Systems - all development platforms that are working to provide a secure environment for any developer to work in. Of course, not all developers need that much "protection" in their code, and are happy to work within something a bit more lean (he gives an example of Rasmus)...

With a follow-up to Chris Shiflett's post on the "insecurity of PHP", Marco Tabini has voiced his opinion over on his blog as well.

Via Chris' blog, I came across this posting that discusses the perceived lack of security in PHP. Others have already made excellent points in response to the author's claims—which, basically, boil down to the fact that he seems to confuse security with a limitation in functionality.

What? Is he serious? Well, yes—and for one simple reason: security means different things to different people. The level of input filtering that may be needed for my software does not necessarily fit the requirements of other people's needs. The goal of the language is to remain as simple, powerful and efficient as possible. It is then up to the developer to determine the level of additional functionality that he requires and implement it—and that includes security.

He goes on mentioning things like the Zend Framework and eZ Systems - all development platforms that are working to provide a secure environment for any developer to work in. Of course, not all developers need that much "protection" in their code, and are happy to work within something a bit more lean (he gives an example of Rasmus)...