In the second of my Addendum posts which revise previous entries either for missing functionality, progressive changes and enhancements, or reader comments, I revise the design and styling of the blog application. There's not a lot to discuss in this entry since the majority of changes are to the HTML and CSS of the blog.

He includes the phtml template files for the updates to the blog's layout along with the code for the new view helper (and tips on making them global and optimizing them).

In this article we're going to take a stab at setting up a default blog style, using some filler content, and finally capturing the design with a Zend_View template to be consumed by Zend_Layout as a common HTML Layout for the entire future blog.

He uses the Blueprint CSS framework for his projects, a simple system that helps you lay out pages it a bit more sensible fashion without having to worry about the underlying CSS so much. He shows how to integrate the library into his project and gives some sample HTML to style with it. Then, with a little help from the Zend_Layout component, he splits it up into a layout that can be used over the entire website (code included).

The PHP Community channel on the Freenode IRC network, #phpc, had a longstanding bot called "Ai". Like many bots at the time of her creation, she was based on PHP 4. [...] With the coming end-of-life of PHP 4 and at the encouragement of channel users, I decided to start a project to develop a new bot based on PHP 5 that would fully utilize its new object model and offer users a chance to contribute to the bot they used in their channel.

Matthew talks about the initial stages of development (planning, research) and some of the development process of the bootstrap file, configuration file, and driver as well as the event handling.

As an application developer, you can have a lifelong career without ever knowing what any of the patterns are called or how or when they're used. However, I've found that a good working knowledge of these patterns, as well as those introduced in the developerWorks article "Five common PHP design patterns" (see Resources), allows you to do two things: Enable high-bandwidth conversations and reduce painful lessons.

The patterns they talk about in this "five more" article of the series are:

• Adapter Pattern
• Iterator Pattern
• Decorator Pattern
• Delegate Pattern
• State Pattern

Diagrams are provided for each of them, showing how they flow along with brief code examples (structures really) to show how that transitions over to actual use.

It's a pretty good article about database design and I think all PHP developers who are just starting to integrate databases in their applications should read it. However, there are a few things I'd like to add and point out.

The "blurb" for the article mentions MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, Microsoft SQL, SQLite and database schemas. You can find out more about this issue, including how to get your own copy, from the php|architect website.

How does the PHP developer in the trenches create powerful object-orientation code? By doing what the PHP's architects did, of course: cherry picking the most pragmatic of OOP principles and patterns! This talk is targeted at the PHP developer who has basic knowledge of PHP OOP syntax but wants to find out where OOP principles can fit into a program.

If you'd like to attend, head over to the meetup page for the event and let them know you're coming. It'll be happening at the CNet Network offices February 7th @ 7pm.