The PHP development group has officially announced the release of PHP 5.3.9, the latest in the 5.3.x series.

The PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 5.3.9. This release focuses on improving the stability of the PHP 5.3.x branch with over 90 bug fixes, some of which are security related.

Bugfixes and updates in this release include the max_input_vars directive, an autoloading issue with is_a and changes to the FPM SAPI module. You can see the full list of changes here or just go over and download this latest release and get to installing - source, Windows binaries.

As is mentioned on PHP.net, the latest release of the 5.3.x series of the language has been released - PHP 5.3.7.

The PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 5.3.7. This release focuses on improving the stability of the PHP 5.3.x branch with over 90 bug fixes, some of which are security related.

Security fixes in this release include updates to crypt_blowfish() and a buffer overflow in crypt(). Enhancements include the fixes for several bugs including ones related to crashing due to internal errors, iterator fixes, sockets, ini settings and more. You can find the full list of changes in the Changelog for this release.

You can download the latest source from the downloads page or, for Windows users, the binaries.

The main PHP.net site has the release announcement for the two latest versions of the language - PHP 5.3.3 and PHP 5.2.14.

The PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 5.3.3. This release focuses on improving the stability and security of the PHP 5.3.x branch with over 100 bug fixes, some of which are security related. All users are encouraged to upgrade to this release. [...] The PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 5.2.14. This release focuses on improving the stability of the PHP 5.2.x branch with over 60 bug fixes, some of which are security related.

The announcements list some of the major security enhancements and fixes in both new versions as well as a few new features like updates to the PCRE libraries and more.

Note: this PHP 5.2.14 release marks the end of active support for the PHP 5.2.x branch. It is encouraged that you upgrade to PHP 5.3 by following the steps in this migration guide.

The latest version in the PHP 5.2.x series has been released - PHP 5.2.9 - with several bug and stability fixes. From the announcement:

The PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 5.2.9. This release focuses on improving the stability of the PHP 5.2.x branch with over 50 bug fixes, several of which are security related.All users of PHP are encouraged to upgrade to this release.

Four security enhancements/fixes are specifically mentioned - a problem with imagerotate, a crash that can happen when extracting zip files, a problem with explode and empty strings and a segfault in json_decode. The full Changelog is here.

You can get the latest download from the downloads page on the PHP.net site (or your favorite mirror).

The Zend Developer Zone has posted an update about the release of the latest stable version of the Zend Framework - version 1.7.3:

The last DevZone post about Zend Framework was announcing a release candidate for version v1.7. We got a little behind and missed the fact that not only has v1.7 been officially released, but the team just recently announced v1.7.3!!

A full list of bugs fixed can be found in the bugs system and new features of the 1.7.x series included the Zend_AMF component, an update to Djoj, a Google book search API and several perfomance enhancements across the board.

You can download the latest version here.

As noted on the main PHp page today, the latest releases in both the 5.2.x series and the 4.4.x series of PHP have been released today - 5.2.2 and 4.4.7.

The PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 5.2.2 and availability of PHP 4.4.7. These releases are major stability and security enhancements of the 5.x and 4.4.x branches, and all users are strongly encouraged to upgrade to it as soon as possible. Further details about the PHP 5.2.2 release can be found in the release announcement for 5.2.2, the full list of changes is available in the ChangeLog for PHP 5. Details about the PHP 4.4.7 release can be found in the release announcement for 4.4.7, the full list of changes is available in the ChangeLog for PHP 4.

Among the updates in these new versions many security enhancements and fixes were made based off of several bug reports from Stanislav Malyshev, Stefan Esser and Ilia Alshanetsky (among others). Updates based on Stefan's comments were largely issues found during the Month of PHP Bugs.

As mentioned in a new post to the CodeIgniter blog today, they've added several new features and enhancements to their (recently relaunched) website.

Besides other small enhancements, they've added to main features:

• a new bug tracking system to make reporting and managing bugs simpler
• the project page to help keep track of websites out there using the framework. If you are, submit yours to be included.

Be sure to check out all of the great content on the rest of the site too with great info like a user guide to help you get started, forums to find help, and even some video tutorials to make learning the framework even easier.

Ilia Alshanetsky has posted an announcement about the availability of the latest Release Candidate for his FUDforum application - 2.7.7RC1.

After a few month break since the last release, a new version of FUDforum is once again in the works. This is primarily a feature enhancement release with a slew of new functionality designed to improve the forum. Aside from the new feature a fair number of bug fixes is also available, so something for everyone.

This latest release can be downloaded from install script and and upgrade script to help you get up to speed as well.

Paul Jones, developer of the Solar Application Framework, has posted the latest version of said software. Details for the release can be found in this blog posting over on his site.

Last night, I released version 0.24.0 of Solar, the simple object library and application repository. Solar is a PHP 5 framework for rapid application development.

You can read the change notes for a full run-down, but there are a few changes in particular that I want to highlight.

He points out changes in the form of two major packages:

• Solar_Request - a new class developed to handle the request information for a script (get/post/cookie/etc)
• Solar_Session - a new class to handle the sessions in an application, complete with read-once "flash" support

He also mentions a small change to the built-in Ajax support for the handling of the "edit" view.

From Alex Young's blog there comes this post stating some of his opinions about the future of PHP and how it "is more depressing than ever".

Rasmus Lerdorf wrote quite a nice article called The no-framework PHP MVC framework. In it, he demonstrates how to create a simple application by using the model view controller design pattern. Using this design pattern, he creates a basic framework to save some effort with common tasks.

Put your hands up if you were a PHP programmer who was writing python or ruby on the side due to the incomprehensibly naive design of PHP… Now put your hands up if you understand and have worked extensively with object oriented programming, functional programming and perhaps agile programming. You're the guys I'm talking to.

He continues, alluding to the lack of sophistication amung PHP developers (procedural over OOP?) and some comments about what he thinks PHP is really missing. He does, however, encourage those out there just getting into design patterns with PHP to check out the article if for nothing more than a good intro to MVC.