Openbiz Cubi is a robust PHP application framework giving developers the ability to create business applications with minimal effort. In this two-part series I'll explain the concepts and steps necessary to create your own business web applications with Cubi. We'll look first at the challenges web developers face and how Openbiz Cubi can help, and then how to install Cubi. In part 2 we'll see how to create our own modules.

They start off by describing the tool and some of the features that come with it (including user management and the XML data object structure). Complete installation instructions are included and a screenshot is included of the end result. They include a "quick tour" of Cubi's features and some of the modules that come with it like the System, Menu and User modules. In part two of the series, they'll show you how to create a custom module.

In the previous article you learned about the basics of Fuel CMS: how to create views and simple pages. Most websites these days are not that simple though, they have a blog, a gallery, etc. In this part, I'll explain how Fuel CMS modules work and create a basic guestbook module to demonstrate.

He starts off by introducing the concept of a "module" and what kind of functionality that represents in the Fuel CMS ecosystem. Then he gets into the actual code, showing you how to create a model that connects to a "guestbook_comments" table and a controller to handle a request to "view" and "add" (save) them.

One of the exciting features of the newly released Zend Framework 2 is the new module system. While ZF1 had modules, they were difficult to manage. [...] In Zend Framework 2, we've architected the MVC from the ground up to make modular applications as easy as possible. [...] To give you an example, in this tutorial, I'll show you how to install the Zend Framework 2 skeleton application, and we'll then install a module and see how easy it is to add it to the application and then configure it.

The screencast (also viewable over on Vimeo) talks you through all the steps in the process, but the code is also provided in the post along with screenshots of how the application should look at various steps.

Porting this blog to Zend Framework 2, I decided to write some unit tests as well, while I'm at it. Not that the current code base doesn't have unit tests, just it doesn't have much of it... Anyway, I'd like to show how to get unit tests for modules up and running, as well how to throw in Mockery in the mix, as it can help us greatly with mocking out objects.

He includes the sample "phpunit.xml" configuration file contents, a "bootstrap.php" file to correctly initialize all the resources you'll need (including Mockery) and two kinds of tests - one on the service layer and another on the database layer.

I've blogged about getting started with ZF2 modules, as well as about ZF2 modules you can already use. But after fielding some questions recently, I realized I should talk about why modules are important for the ZF2 ecosystem.

He covers some of the history of the idea, starting with the MVC rework/refactor of the framework and the desire from several people to have self-contained components that could be native to a ZF app. ZFv1 made it work (kinda) with Zend_Application, but it was difficult so solving this became a main focus of ZFv2. He illustrates with a "building block" metaphor based on his current blog site (currently being refactored too).

This kind of building-block development makes your job easier as a developer - and allows you to focus on the bits and pieces that make your site unique. As such, I truly feel that modules are the most important new feature of ZF2.

After publishing the recent WordPress Developer's Toolbox, there were several Drupal developers calling out for equal coverage. In this post you will find a thorough collection of all kinds of resources that will aid designers and developers working with Drupal-powered websites. This collection is intended to simplify your tasks and save you time when working with Drupal.

They've broken it out into some of the basic components you might need, modules, a few sites offering some design inspiration, themes, tutorials and more.

• A look at Pluggable Authentication Modules by Mikael Johansson
• Jonathan Stark's review of FileMaker for PHP Developers: Part 2
• a look at the Active Record pattern in PHP from Dirk Merkel
• and the two usual columns from Ilia Alshanetsky (Security Corner) and Jeff Moore (Test Pattern).

The method I would like to describe is based on the webserver lighttpd. Lighttpd is a single process webserver written for high traffic sites. It supports fast-cgi out of the box which makes it ideal for hosting PHP applications.

n the scripting world, a common way to optimize the response time of an application is often as follows: the application by itself saves every page result (or fragments) into a cache file before delivering. The next time a routine has to check whether it could output cached content or not. The cache has to be rebuild periodicaly or when the application updates some data entries - it deletes cache files - and generates them again.

But there is a bottleneck: every time the webserver gets a request it has to start the application - even there are no changes made on the data in the background. t would be nice if cached files could delivered as static content. But the question is: how can a webserver decide if a cache file is outdated without involving the application!

So Jo proposes an alternate solution - using a combination of lighttpd, MySQL, and PHP as fast-cgi to lighten the load. Code/configuration examples are included, and all of the complimentary modules needed are linked to as well. There's even a sample PHP application to help illustrate the point.

He looked into several of the methods out there, but wasn't pleased with any of them - so he created his own, the Phly_Struct and Phly_Config modules. He talks briefly about what they are, but gets quickly into the code examples to prove their worth. It's a basic example tying the two of them together and loading some simple values into an instance of the Phly_Config. Both are available from the PHLY: PHP Library PEAR channel.