We felt that the other handful of PHP Meetup groups in the area cater to those just starting out more often than not. The engineers who are serious about building professional, enterprise-level applications don't really have a group where they can consistently expect presentations on those topics.

The focus of the group is less on the basic "hows" and "whys" of PHP and more on things like performance/scaling, optimization, testing and application architecture. If you're interested in joining the group, check out < href="http://www.meetup.com/pro-php/">their Meetup page. There's no word (as of the time of this post) on when their first meeting will be, but it sounds like an interesting group.

You already know Singleton, Signal/Observer, Factory and friends. But, which object oriented patterns are en vogue in the PHP world and how can you seize their power? This talk gives you an overview on Dependency Injection, Data Mapper and more OO patterns the PHP world talks about right know, using practical code examples.

You can listen to this latest episode either via the in-page player or by downloading the mp3 directly. You can follow along with the talk in his slides over on the qafoo.com site.

Sporting more than 70 native array-related functions, PHP's array manipulation capabilities have long been one of the language's most attractive features. [...] There are however many array-related tasks which ask a bit more of the developer than merely knowing what part of the manual one needs to consult. Many such tasks require a somewhat more in-depth understanding of the native features, or are possible only when a bit of imagination is applied to the problem.

In his examples he shows how to do things like sorting a multi-dimensional array, iterating recursively (with the help of a RecursiveArrayIterator), converting an object to an array and doing "natural" sorting on an array's contents.

As Codeigniter builds on its (already considerable) popularity, now might be a good time to think about using the massively community-supported PHP framework to its maximum potential, if you aren't already. Here are two tutorials to check out, depending on your level of familiarity with object-oriented PHP and frameworks.

Here's the two he mentions:

• Codeigniter for the absolute beginner
• Developing dynamic Web sites with CodeIgniter

The second tutorial is a little older, but the functionality of the framework hasn't changed dramatically since then so most of it should still apply.

On a previous post I had someone comment that they did not agree that the code implementation that was presented in the article was advanced (which was described in the title). They also claimed that I was not an advanced PHP programmer. This made me think. Not because my programming skill or knowledge was challenged. But because I'm not sure what makes code or a programmer "advanced".

He asks a few questions about the criteria for considering someone an "advanced programmer" including things like how fast or efficient they are, how much they make or the conference(s) they've been to. He points out that, because "advanced" is such a relative term, it's hard to put a finger on it. Being this hard to define (and mostly worthless even if it is) he suggests an alternative to trying to figure it out:

Instead of throwing around general terms in labeling code or other programmers, let's come together and figure out ways in improving code together. Practical applications.

Last year I wrote an article in how to implement basic validation for a form with PHP. I decided to re-look at this and improve what I did in that article. This time we are going to make a more advanced PHP form that is more responsive and effective. This PHP sample code has many advantages over the previous article. Not only that, but for the most part it is easier to implement with more complexed forms where you need more than basic validation.

He uses PHP5, jQuery and a helpful validation plugin than handles a lot of the heavy lifting for you in defining a validate() method with the field names and checks to perform on them. You just apply this to the form and it works like magic. Don't forget the backend though - he includes code to check for things like values being set and specific checks on a few fields.

Continuing with our best-five-book series, today we are introducing our pick of the top 5 PHP books. Obviously, PHP has been around much longer than our other review subjects such as Android or HTML5, and there is a greater general variety of books to choose from.

Their list of top five covers a pretty good range of skillsets, but leans more towards the introductory level:

• Professional PHP6 (and yes, they mention that the title is "blatant false advertising" since PHP6 is nowhere to be found)
• Learning PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Dynamic Websites
• PHP Solutions: Dynamic Web Design Made Easy
• Beginning PHP and MySQL: From Novice To Professional
• Head First PHP & MySQL

Well, if you happen to be one of those more seasoned PHP developers, this post is for you. Our expert panel has returned to offer helpful hints and suggestions for those of you who have long since passed the "beginner" milestone and are on your way to becoming true masters of the art and science of PHP. Feel free to ask questions and leave your own suggestions in the comments - the lovely people we interviewed in this post are quite likely to pop in and reply to you directly.

Tips included in this article are things like:

• Stay Current
• Interact With Others' Code
• Ask Questions
• Keep It Simple
• Maintain Your Code
• Work With Others

Notice a trend? Working with others outside of your own development bubble can really help not only your development skills but can also provide you with a good way to give back to the community.

Besides OpenSource projects like the Linux Kernel, OpenJDK or Perl, companies increasingly use distributed version control systems like Git and Mercurial. Their unique features makes new and modern work-flows possible, which are particularly useful in agile development. The talk gives a introduction to the advanced features of Git and the fundamental concepts of modern distributed version control systems.

As usual, you can choose to either listen via the in-page player or you can download the mp3 and listen whenever. His slides are also available online so you can follow along.

In this video tutorial from our Advanced PHP series, we look at how to write a very simple MVC (Model,View,Controller) framework from scratch using PHP 5.3, soon to be PHP 6

You can find other advanced PHP videos on this page of the KillerPHP.com site covering topics like Javascript, creating CRUD, making a login system, ORM and much more.