• An interview with Colin Hayhurst, co-founder of StackBlaze, on running a PHP startup
• A preview of PHP Summit 2012 UK
• Stefan Priebsch (thePHP.cc) on how to see the bigger picture (application architecture)
• 'PaaS: The Cloud On-Ramp For PHP Developers' (by Lucas Carlson of AppFog)
• 'Cryptography In PHP' (by Enrico Zimuel of Zend)

Once again, you can download this issue for free to enjoy!

This is an exciting time for PHP and an exciting time to be launching a new publication. [...] We think we've got a great selection of articles in this first issue of Web & PHP Magazine, and we hope there's something of interest for PHP devs of every skill level. Feel free to get in touch if there's anything that you'd like to see in next month's issue, or submit a piece yourself. As ever, we'll be out and about in the PHP community over the next few months, so don't hesitate to say hello.

In their inaugural issue, there's articles about the PHP UK Conference, Security and emerging databases. There's also an interview with Robert Douglass (Senior Drupal Advisor at Acquia).

They're also offering the issue for download directly from their site (as a PDF) with later issues coming to multiple platforms (like mobile devices).

PHPWomen are featured in the December issue of the php|architect magazine, we're the subject of this month's /etc column! If you aren't already a subscriber - then go and check out the options, they even have a free issue offer so there are no excuses.

The column, written by PHP Women's own Lorna Mitchell, looks at some of the goals of the group, the work they do sponsoring female developers where they can, their mentoring programs and the communication methods - IRC and forums - that are open to all, not just female developers.

You can check out the issue here (and order a copy too!)

The company is a non-profit that publishes both a print magazine and produces daily online-only content. /Commentary /is politically conservative and one of the oldest and most respected monthly political magazines in America. We need an energetic team player to serve as our in-house programmer/developer and general tech consultant. Competitive salary. Full benefits.

Skills:

• PHP (2-3 yrs)
• CF (2-3 yrs)
• CSS
• Flash
• SQL (2-3 yrs)
• Previous experience with print/online media highly preferable.

Responsibilities:

• Maintain and develop a variety of applications for /Commentary/'s website
• Interface with our editorial staff, systems administrators, and potentially outside development houses on larger-scale projects.
• Help develop and implement a long-term strategy both for web content and web sales.

To apply for this position please send your resume, with references and portfolio, to contentions[at]commentarymagazine[dot]com, or contact Sam Munson at 212 891 6737.

Q: Tell me some about the update/restructuring (like what prompted the change)

A: As of December 2008, php|architect will enter its sixth year of publication. Much has changed within the PHP community - and in our company'"since we launched our magazine, and we felt that it was time to ensure that our brand and our flagship product were up-to-date with the market they serve.

The process of change actually started earlier this summer, when we launched our new line of training courses - the first truly comprehensive training program designed specifically for PHP developers. Our brand identity and the magazine were the next logical targets - particularly when you consider how long they have been around and how many people they reach every month.

In addition, one problem that we have always had with the magazine has been its publication schedule - we initially created php|architect as a PDF-only publication, and since we've switched to the print format we've been struggling with the management of our publication timelines. The unfortunate reality is that postal services throughout the world sometimes take a *really* long time to deliver third-class mail and, historically. we have never done as good a job of taking that into account as we could'"something that we intend to fix with this relaunch.

Finally, our aim with php|architect has always been to create a resource capable of providing the PHP community with the educational tools and knowledge needed by professionals who work and operate in world-class, enterprise-level environments. We felt that our current price point and distribution strategy had moved away from this core goal, and that a major adjustment was needed to bring us back on track.

Q: What does this mean for current readers/subscribers?

A: A lot of good things! First of all, the cost of a subscription goes down to as low as $29.99 for twelve issues - and that includes both the print *and* the PDF versions of the magazine. Naturally, we're going to make good on all our current subscribers and extend their subscriptions based on the cost of the magazine when they signed up for it - thus, most people should see their remaining issue counts go up considerably at no extra cost, and new subscribers will be able to finally get access to the magazine at a very reasonable price.

In addition, our current subscribers (as well as the new ones!) will enjoy better delivery times, and all the advantages that come with the new format.

Q: What all is involved in the change? Are there any changes to the magazine(s)?

A: Much of the work that is involved in the relaunch of our activities will go on behind the scenes, but visitors to our websites will note lots of changes over the coming months'"starting with a minor redesign of our site to accommodate the new logo and brand identity, as well as the new pricing and subscription strategy for the magazine.

Starting with the January issue, we are targeting a 45-day window for shipment of the magazine'"meaning that the print copies of the January issue, for example, will be mailed out to subscribers around the beginning of December - thus ensuring more prompt delivery in everybody's mailboxes. In addition, the entire magazine will switch to full-colour printing throughout - thus providing a richer experience for our users and a more challenging and fun environment for us to develop our work in. We will continue to support the PDF version using our popular DRM-free distribution and personalization system, and try to synchronize the arrival of the print issue with the release of the PDF file as closely as possible.

Also for the first time, we are publishing our editorial calendar for all of 2009. This will help readers know what's coming, advertisers better plan their campaigns and authors draw inspiration for their writing activities.

Q: Will there be new things available immediately after the change?

Once the initial brand relaunch is complete, we are planning to re-engineer our site to provide a smoother shopping experience and better account management facilities. Since we relaunched our website almost a year ago, our web-based sales have more than doubled, and our back-end infrastructure has handled the growth without any problems. On the front-end side, however, we have done a considerable amount of research on the habits and needs of our customers and have discovered areas ripe for improvements that we couldn't even imagine before, and we will be redesigning some areas of our website to reflect the lessons we have learned.

In addition, we have some great promotions planned between here and New Year's - including a comeback for our greatly popular "Seven Days of Christmas" series of offers over the holidays. We skipped 7DOX last year, and our users gave us an earful for it, so we'll make sure to keep our priorities straight this time!

The new php|architect website has already been launched along with new training courses for the Zend Framework Certified Exam.

To subscribe to the new and improved php|architect magazine, visit their subscription page and signup. Find out more in this post on their site.

Well its been an exciting few weeks on the phpwomen forums as we've been running an article contest for new articles contributed to our "Best Practices" section. We've been overwhelmed by the quality of the submissions and of the follow up comments added by other users - thanks to everyone who has joined in!

The winners are Akrabat for his look at recursion and gerard for his article on CLI tips and tricks. They both have won their own copies of Zend Studio for Eclipse, a 1 year subscription to Linux Pro magazine and a chance to have their article published on the magazine's site.

The article contest running on PHPWomen.org through July just got more exciting. We have asked people to post entries to our Best Practices forum. The authors of the best two entries will win copies of Zend Studio for Eclipse.

Besides the possibility of winning one of these licenses, entrants will also be entered into the running (two winners) to get a 1 year subscription to Linux Pro Magazine and have the opportunity for their article to be featured on the magazine's website.

Oracle Magazine's May/June 2008 issue contains a "Developer Nation" article. In it, David Kelly interviews Levi Dixon from Community Connect about using PHP and Oracle.

The article references the Oracle/PHP "strange combination" that used to exist and how it's evolved into a vital, living part of Oracle's stack (like with the OCI8 extension).

There is a new PHP magazine called "Enterprise PHP" available in English, German and French which might even console those missing the apparently ill-fated International PHP Magazine. Back before publication the usual tree of suspects led me to being interviewed for the initial edition published a short while back.

The current issue (which you can get for free after a survey) has articles looking at testing your PHP scripts, how "professional" it is to use PHP and the fact that Java is not PHP (wait, isn't that backwards?)

So, in the digital toolbox of the developer, where has PHP been designed to work best? And where is it, perhaps, not the best tool for the job? [...] While other languages can surely be used to solve The Web Problem, in this article I explain why PHP is the premier solution for server-side Web scripting.

John talks about how PHP was written for the web, how it approaches and handles web requests, the security of the language and some of the major software packages that are being used in PHP development today (like the Zend Framework, PHPUnit and PECL extensions).