In this new tutorial Smashing Magazine shows you how to create a mini "Christmas List" application with PHP, HTML and CSS (and a little bit of database help) to display a list of what you or your family wants this holiday.

'Tis the season to be jolly, and how much jollier could we make it than with a helpful Christmas wish list crafted for your family to ensure that you get maximum presentage this holiday? In this article, we will focus on creating a very simple system that allows you to add gift ideas to a Web page, and for your family (or whoever) to view the list.

They walk you through the setup of the basic PHP file structure, the HTML template for the list output, CSS to make it look nice and the actual PHP backend - working with a MySQL database to pull out product information and use a simple login method.

If you've ever wanted to start from scratch and wanted to build your own PHP framework, you might want to take a look at this list. It's a set of thirteen good resources to help you get started and introduce you to some of the basic framework concepts.

Frameworks serve as basics for developing a theory, condition and design in broader sense but in the world of web site development, framework means applications that help you in creating something new or something most popular around the web. We have listed top php framework tutorials for your convenience so that you can have a good idea of how to create a framework if you are not satisfied with one listed by us.

Tutorials in the list include:

• A three-part series on NetTuts.com
• A Framework in an Hour
• Tiny MVC Boilerplate with PHP
• Write your own PHP5 MVC framework

The PHPBenelux conference has officially announced their list of speakers for their 2012 event (January 27th and 28th in Antwerp):

We are happy and proud to announce the speaker line-up for the 2012 edition of the PHPBenelux Conference. We already released our tutorials on November 16th, but this is the real deal. Speaker bio's, talk abstracts and schedule will be added later. Please note that this list is subject to change.

Sessions for this year's event include:

• Tobias Schlitt: Writing testable code
• Sebastian Marek: Magic Behind the Numbers - Software Metrics In Practice
• Nick Belhomme: PHP traits, treat or threat?
• Jordi Boggiano: Redis - Your advanced in-memory key-value store
• Stephan Hochdörfer: The state of DI in PHP
• Craig Kitterman: Enterprise Class Cloud for the Average Joe

Tickets are still at their Early Bird prices (but only until December 16th!) and you can get a pass for both the tutorial day and main conference day for just 260 Euro. If you just want to attend the conference, that ticket is only 135 Euro. You can order them here. If you want to attend one of the tutorials, you'll need to specify that by ordering the related ticket.

On the WebInsightLab.com blog there's a new post with a long list (30 to be exact) of PHP-based content management systems besides WordPress that you could select from for your next project.

Yes, there are many CMS available for your website, most of them are Open Source. You can not only use them but may modify too according to your need but under GNU license. [...] Now move on to other PHP Based Open Source CMS, following list shows you 30 Open Source CMS besides WordPress which can be useful to build your website and manage your content.

Other content management systems that made their list include:

• Pluck
• Active CMS
• Automne
• concrete5
• Diem
• Dynamix

Each one on the list comes with a brief description of what it offers and where it comes from.

Noupe.com has posted a list of what they consider some of the best web design and development podcasts out there ranging on topics from general web tech to specific topics like accessibility and critiques of website designs.

Not long ago we had a post that discussed the role that podcasts have been playing in the design field. After which we were asked for a post that focused on more web design and development related podcasts for our readers. [...] We scoured the bountiful podcast offerings that the design and development community have on offer these days, and found some great shows to point our readers towards.

Shows in their list include:

• The Big Web Show
• The Web Ahead
• Design Festival Podcast
• The ATX Web Show
• Herding Code
• UXpod - User Experience Podcast

Kevin Schroeder has a new post to his blog today with a huge list of podcasts for your listening pleasure - the complete list of ZendCon 2010 sessions as recorded at last year's event.

I've decided to [...] just upload them all so that you can download them all in preparation for this year's ZendCon. As you listen to these paragons of PHP goodness think of how wonderful it would be for you to be there in person and talk to these founts of wisdom. You will find several of the speakers from last year at ZendCon as well as a bunch of new ones. While you may have missed the early registration there is still time for you to get your tickets to ZendCon 2011.

There's about 75 of them for you to enjoy and not much time for you to catch up - this year's ZendCon happens in October (17th-21st) in Santa Clara, CA. They have a great list of sessions for this year's event too (which I'm sure will all be recorded for release next year as well)!

On the Zoomzum blog there's a new post with ten regular expressions PHP developers can use to accomplish some common tasks (like email validation and date formatting checks).

Regular expression for the PHP developers, on of the most popular tool for validating data is the regular expression. In this list we provides some validation - string match, password match validation, email address validation, date format and many more which helps developer to make their application more fast and easy to execute. [...] Have you note that, regular expressions are more slower than the basic string function, its takes a short time to execute than any others.

Included in their list are things like:

• Password Match Validation
• Validate URL
• Validate URL using Preg_match
• UK Postcode Validation
• SSN,ISBN and Zipcode Validation

A few of these could be done with either one or two string calls or some of the filtering functions that are included in PHP.

On the Symfony blog Fabien Potencier has a new post talking about a change in the support structure for developers wanting to get help with either Symfony1 or Symfony2 - a split in the mailing list to help make things a bit easier to split out.

Now that Symfony2 is just around the corner, we need to better organize community support for both symfony1 and Symfony2. As more people start using Symfony2, the user mailing-list is becoming more and more difficult to follow. [...] After an opinionated discussion on the mailing-list, I've decided to create two new mailing-lists that are replacing the current users mailing-list: one for symfony1 and another one for Symfony2. The current mailing-list has been switched to the archive mode; all messages will remain browseable and searchable but new messages will be rejected.

If you're a current member of the "users" mailing list and want a similar experience, you'll need to subscribe to both. Otherwise, pick the one you like and watch your inbox fill up. This break up makes it easier for people to find messages specifically related to their version of choice without having to look for the "[Symfony2]" tag in the subject line.

Freek Lijten has a recent post looking at some of the types of discussions that happen on the php-internals mailing list.

The internals list is the place to be to hear about the current state of PHP. It is one of PHP's many mailing lists, but this is the one where (core) developers discuss new features, current bugs and wild ideas. If you want to keep up with things it is a good idea to sign up, it is not an extremely high volume list and if you ignore the noise it is quite informative. In this article I would like to share examples of stuff typically discussed on the list.

He mentions feature requests in general and, more specifically things like traits support (multiple inheritance), array dereferencing, callable arrays and the debate over the short array syntax.

Jason Gilmore has posted a new article with a list of thirteen tutorials all centered around the Zend Framework but on a wide variety of topics.

A few weeks ago I posted what turned out to be a rather popular compendium of productivity- and best practices-related PHP tutorials which I've published in recent years on Developer.com and PHPBuilder.com. As it happens I write about the Zend Framework with equal vigor, and figured readers might like to check out the list of Zend Framework tutorials I've written over the past two years for the aforementioned sites. With no further ado, here's the list.

Among the tutorials on the list are things like:

• Testing with the Zend Framework: How to Get Started
• Taking Advantage of Simple Cloud with the Zend Cloud Component
• Running PHP and Zend Framework Scripts from the Command Line
• Managing User Accounts with the Zend Framework