The Developer Tutorials blog has a new post mentioning the use of YAML structure for creating configuration files in your application.

YAML, or YAML Ain't Markup Language, is a "human friendly data serialization standard". It's essentially a very basic format for storing data, and uses far less syntax than standard PHP. [...] It's almost like English; it's as basic as you want. Of course, that's not to say it doesn't support complex structures - this example demonstrates the power of the format.

He also points out the spyc extension that makes working with the files in PHP a breeze.

The International PHP Magazine has links to announcements of three new releases of PHP-related applications - the PHP Advanced Graph and Chart Collection, Blitz Templates and the Generic PHP Plugins & Config System:

• PHP Advanced Graph and Chart Collection 5.1 provides a very easy way to embed dynamically-generated graphs and charts into PHP applications and HTML Web pages
• Blitz templates 0.4.19 Blitz templates is a fast template engine written in C and compiled as a PHP module. It started as a php_templates replacement, but developed into much more.
• Generic PHP plugins and config system 0.75 Plugin meta descriptions can reside as human-friendly comment blocks in .php scripts. Generic PHP Config reads them and facilitates plugin and configuration setting management.

Joshua Eichorn has a new update on his Webthumb application he's mentioned before, noting some of the issues/updates that he's worked through so far.

Webthumb got off the ground yesterday without too many problems. It ran into problems right out of the gate since a large number of sites don't seem to want to finish loading correctly. I also updated the server config, Webthumb now supports flash (version 7), and has a lot more fonts installed so sites that need non-latin characters should be working correctly.

He's also laid out some "feature goals" that he'd like ot add in eventually, including better URLs, a searching method for thumbnails, and user accounts.

From this quick post (on Jeremiah's blog) we learn how to create a simple proxy for your web surfing needs with the help of Ubuntu Linux, Apache2, and PHP4.

Using Ubuntu Linux, Apache2, & PHP4 we can set up our own PHP Proxy page to use at work or school for those web sites you probably shouldn't have access to.

The linux installation isnt covered, but the painless installs of the rest of the apps is summed up in a few simple lines. Following that, he shows you what needs to be edited in the Apache config and where to get the PHP proxy application from.