Chris Hartjes has written up a new post for his site, So you want to write tests, giving a good overview of some of the things you'll need to consider when wanting to move into a more test-friendly development world.

I often get asked for some advice on how to get started with writing tests for your PHP code. It’s a fair question, since I am presenting myself as an expert-ninja-rockstar-sensei-opinionated-egomaniac on the topic. I often struggle with coming up with an answer that can fit into the 140 characters available via Twitter, but clearly this is not a good strategy. As an early Christmas 2012 present to all my loyal followers, who put up with my never-ending stream of nonsense and provide a slowly-increasing portion of my income, here are my thoughts on how to get started with testing your PHP code.

He offers a list of suggestions, each with a bit of explanation:

• Learn how to recognize untestable code
• Keep learning the language
• Chain units of code together for greatness
• Start asking "how am I going to test this?"
• Stop people from pushing code without proof it's fixed
• Stop people from doing things manually
• Stop using tools without test suites
• Always wonder if you're doing it right