Threads will be automatically created and linked for you via the discussion links found at the bottom of wiki articles. More details about this integration can be found at a blog post made in the ExpressionEngine blog, as well as a free ExpressionEngine extension to implement this on your own sites that utilize the ExpressionEngine wiki and discussion forum.

The plugin (the "Wiki Forum Talk" extension) bridges the two components and either makes a new topic when a new wiki entry is added or, if there's already a forum topic for the entry, it automatically links to it.

The problem isn't that namespaces are bad, it's that these arcane structures seem to have so little impact on development in PHP today for many many people. Does that mean it's unimportant?

He talks about the real value of namespaces, a comparison to type hinting's inclusion, the current amount of (needless?) traffic on the php.internals list and his opinions on why namespaces are valid.

This is the only forum dedicated to the Zend Framework (in English) and several users have already joined with lots of topics started including MVC, Zend_Db, Concepts related to the framework and Ideas about it and its future. So, join up yourself and talk with other Zend Framework developers at zfforums.com.

There's already some decent activity over there - around 120 members with over 350 posts going - not too bad considering they've just started up. Head on over, get yourself signed up and start participating in the discussion to help build these forums into a great resource for Zend Framework developers everywhere.

As I mentioned previously, I'll be at MIX this year on a panel discussing ASP and PHP interoperability, along with Jesse Liberty, Bill Staples, Joe Stagner and Brian Goldfarb.

I've been told that MIX has sold out and that there is a lot of interest in our slot, so I'm sure we'll have plenty to talk about, but I'm looking for questions to break the ice and get things rolling.

If you know a little bit about the topic and would like to help out with questions of your own, send them along to Wez via email - wez@php.net.

Now that all the yearly holiday chaos is out of the way, we bring you new logs of two recent IRC discussions. As usual, they are available on the google group.

The two talks were:

• a look at Injection from BigE
• a discussion of web scraping with Elzar.

In an effort to get more participation in discussions within the channel, we're going to try something new: having a regular discussion-driven event. If all goes well, we'll alternate moderators and topics and keep the time slot.

To get information about connecting to Freenode, check out their website for the addresses or just point your IRC client to irc.freenode.net and you'll get routed to a server. Then just "/j #php.thinktank" and you'll be there!

Most websites have some method of interacting with a visitor. Some have a chat system and others have shoutboxes or other ways to attract the visitor to return. One of the most used methods is a discussion forum. And this is what we are going to create and discuss in this article.

This is part one they create the main index page, listing out the current topics, a "view article" page to show the details of the post, and, of course, a way to respond to the current thread for any and all to use. Keep an eye out for the next article where they create the administrative section for the application.

It's been a while since I've bothered to look at ning, but this time around I was VERY impressed. The interface is slick! Kudos to Elizabeth and Ben for setting this up, and of course all the people at ning for the cool platform.

The site already has a good start with a few members on it and discussions already starting for getting to know fellow members and opinions on moving to make this official PHP Community page.

If you'd like to check it out or get involved in the effort, head over and sign up.

UPDATE: it's been six hours since this initial posting and the site already has 24 members registered and growing more all the time. Head over and sign up now! And check out this new post over on the Zend Developer Zone for even more info.

One of the more controversial additions to PHP6 is the GOTO. Some have argued it flys in the face of many years good programming sense but there are valid use cases, when running performance critical operations such as parsing, where the overhead of making PHP user function calls becomes significant.

Anyway GOTO seems to have opened the gates to some more radical language modifications and recent discussion a revolved around adding a COMEFROM statement to PHP, which led to an initial patch being applied to the PHP6 CVS branch here.

The statement allows you to modify your code's behavior based on where it came from rather than just forwarding around bits of code from one place to the next. Harry gives a code example of how it can be used as well.

(Hint: think about this one...)]]> Fri, 31 Mar 2006 20:20:04 -0600 http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/4768 http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/4768 Boston PHP User Group has posted information about their next meeting (February 7th, 2006) on their site.

AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is one of the hottest buzzwords on the web 2.0 landscape today (see: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AJAX). Does the "steak" measure up to the "sizzle"? Our panel explores AJAX as it relates to PHP and your client's (pun intended) UI experience.

The panel will consist of Adam Peller, Max Carlson, Steve Zimmerman, and Gabe Ricard. They'll be talking about Ajax the entire night - advantages, implementation, design principles, and much more.

The meeting will be in Cambridge at 6:30pm - for all of the details and a map to the location, check out this page...]]> Tue, 31 Jan 2006 08:57:29 -0600