If you've read the PHP|Architect Magazine - March 2011 Edition, you have surely enjoyed the nice article by Jason Austin (a PHP developer from Raleigh, NC) titled "Good PHP help is hard to find". Jason talks about 'the why' and 'the how' to distinguish yourself as a qualified PHP Professional from the crowd. And the way to do that is: "You have to build your geek cred". I think he did a brilliant job with the article.

Some of Khayrattee's suggestions include (each rated with a number of "cred points"):

• Get certified with recognised certifications like the Zend Certified Engineer program
• Start a PHP meetup group near you
• Sign up to attend PHP conferences around the world
• Blog about PHP { have a blog dedicated to it }

every once in a while I hear some plea for the great PHP community that makes me a bit nauseous. "Sharing code, knowledge, elePHPants, it's all so fun to share and be part of this great club of lovely people! I share my project with you and you share your project with me. And then we hug! Weeeee!!!" Well f*ck that. [...] So besides the hippy arguments, the PHP community also has some great, more down-to-earth things to offer for companies, developers and everybody else involved.

He's made a list of four things (of the many) that the PHP community offers like being able to contribute to open source projects, being able to open source your own projects, attending the many conferences and user groups to "learn and be inspired" by others and, of course, the great online community in the form of tutorial, IRC channels, mailing lists, etc.