After all, nearly all authentication is identical in its basic functionality, and there's usually no good reason to spin off your own code if it's already written for you.

They talk about three packages - the Auth package, Auth_HTTP, and the Auth_PrefManager. They describe the Auth package in depth in this article - common uses, related packages, required packages, what the constructor is like and descriptions of the functions the package provides.

Over the course of this two-part series, I'll walk you through the development of a highly extensible and "pluggable" website engine with PHP 5, which will allow you generate web pages on the fly based on a predefined (but simple) database structure.

They start things off by setting up the core of the system - the layout and structure of how the pages will flow. To help make this an easy task, they also create the simple template with links down the side to the different "pages". Finally, they finish off this part of the series with the database structure and push some of the sample content in to give you an idea of how it's all formatted.

• php|works 2006: Mozilla Report
• php|works 2006: Mozilla agenda
• php|works 2006: eZ Report
• php|works 2006: The eZ Plan
• php|works 2006: General Followup

The PHP community is shrinking by the day, at least that's how I feel. I consider the community to consist of the extremely enthusiastic evangelists, those who make stuff instead of benchmarking them. We have a growing base of young developers who only need a small portion of PHP's capabilities and a shrinking base of developers who want to make things happen. We need chaos, not community rules. We need a CPAN, not a PEAR, a Smarty or a Zend Framework; these projects give me a feeling of being the "chosen" ones.

He preceeds this with a bit about his history with PHP, like how he used to feel when major updates were made. But somewhere along the line it got to be about something else - the debates between which was better (ASP vs. PHP, PHP vs. Java, etc), looking more at things like which quotes were faster, etc. Even the release of PHP5 couldn't make up for these community changes.

So, his suggestion is that we, as a community, stop worrying about if PHP is "enterprise ready" or competing with the wide array of other languages/environments out there and just get back to what PHP does best - getting back to its web development foundations where its real power lies.

In the original press release it references, they also note that the Show-EZ system, which the horse entry section of the organization's site is based on, has only been around for a little while but has already proved itself invaluable. It even bosts the ability to be used via a Blackberry/Pocket PC/cellphone for the ultimate in mobility during shows.

• Episode 1 - Mambo love, new team members, Mamboday in Italy, and the current state of development.
• Episode 2 - a Q&A session, Mastering Mambo, phpfreelancer.org, and an interview with two developers from mambohub.com
• Episode 3 - an interview with Christian Wenz, a template design contest, users survey, and the "Component Corner"

If you haven't gotten a chance to check them out yet, grab one and give it a listen. You can also subscribe to their feed to catch the latest...]]> Thu, 08 Dec 2005 08:42:30 -0600