Since a few days, there is a new package in Debian: php5-xdebug. After a few years of talking licenses, due to the help of Martin Meredith and Francois Marier Xdebug can finally be installed with apt-get.

XDebug is a debugging and profiling tool that adds additional information (more than just the usual "error on line..." sort of thing) to the output of your PHP scripts. It also adds more complex functionality like profiling and code coverage reports run on your applications.

In this article, we are going to tackle this subject and present some real-world applicable solutions.First of all, this article presumes that you either have a web server of your own or one that you pay for (as a web space) with the necessary server-side services already running and configured appropriately (PHP, MySQL, Apache, etc.). Second, we are going to consider free options for the applications we'll present throughout this article.

The two pieces of software they look at are 4images Gallery and the Coppermine Gallery. Simple installation instructions are included (more can be found in the project's documentation, though) and screenshots show some of the end results.

We are going to continue with the installation and configuration of web-based file managers. We'll present another freeware, open-source PHP-based file manipulation utility in the same way we explained bfExplorer in the previous part. This time, it's going to be the PHPfileNavigator2 (pfn2).

They cover the basics - installation (on a pre-existing Apache/PHP server), configuuration and some example screenshots of it in action when correctly set up.

I was trying to interact with my subversion repositories using PHP yesterday and I knew that PECL has a extension named "SVN" for PHP users. So I tried to install in in my machine by when I tried to install it with the [following] command it always failed.

The trick to his hint is to install the libsvn-dev package (found via a search with apt-get) and installed and compiled in to the PHP installation with the extension. Sample code is included.

As your site traffic grows it takes longer and longer to generate a dynamic page from sending multiple queries to a database. One possible solution to limit queries is to cache the result of each query that is needed, or to have a complete full page cache for your site.

They look at the two ways I mentioned - the Cache_Lite PEAR package and the APC extension (that will soon be included by default in the stable PHP releases). Bits of code are provided for each showing how to get them set up and get them working inside of your application.

Installation of PHP-GTK 2 on MacOS X 10.4 and 10.5 is actually pretty simple, as it can use the latest PHP-GTK installer, which works just like any other Mac installer.

They include screenshots as a guide to the step-by-step (extremely simple) process of getting the software installed.

For those interested in technical details, a complete list of the prerequisites is given at step 2 of the installation. Download the installer at http://www.kix.in/php-gtk2/PHP-GTK-2.0.0.dmg

In this tutorial, we will get an introduction to CubeCart, created and distributed by Devellion Limited. Their flagship product is one of the easiest low-cost e-commerce solutions available, and is growing in popularity. Note that CubeCart is not technically open source, since the code cannot be freely redistributed. On the other hand, most of the code is not protected using encoding, and can thus be read and understood.

They go through the selection process - picking which version of their software is right for you - and the installation, configuration and how to verify that everything's up and running smoothly. Screenshots are included to help along the way.

So, you want to start your own Digg or Reddit? Look no further. With PHP and MySQL, you can create your own Digg site in just five minutes. All you need is a PHP web server and MySQL database server; follow these instructions and you'll be up and running in time.

They use the Pligg software to do all of the hard work and describe its installation, configuration and use - simple and easy. You can find out more about Pligg on its website.

One of the most popular CMSs is Drupal, partly because it offers all of the aforesaid features, and partly because developers familiar with PHP (the language used by Drupal) can modify the functioning and appearance of almost every aspect of Drupal.

In this tutorial, we will discuss how to install and configure a brand-new Drupal Web site from scratch. We will also touch upon the basics of adding content to a Drupal installation.

They include useful screenshots along the way as well, helping to guide you through the process a bit better than with just words. There's tons of configuration options that you could mess with in a Drupal installation, but they do well to give you the essential ones that you'll need to get it up and running smoothly.

If you'd like to work on your favorite PHP apps on your S60 phones, here's PAMP - Personal Apache, MySQL and PHP. This is implemented on the Symbian OS using Open C, which is a set of industry-standard POSIX and middleware C libraries for S60.

The PAMP system is pretty easy to install and guides can be found over on the dev.mobi website to help get you started. You can download the latest version of the project from its SourceForge website.