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.

In a new post to the SitePoint PHP Blog today, Ian Muir shows you how to keep thing separated using the HTML Template IT extension. It helps prevent application functionality and logic from seeping its way into your output.

One of the more challenging things I've run into while doing PHP development is effectively separating presentation from program logic. In many projects, I felt I was doing a great job until I had to do a markup change and jump through a lot hurdles to make it happen. In my recent projects, I've starting using the HTML Template IT extension in PEAR, and its made things a lot easier.

By way of example, he gives code blocks - one showing an example template and the other how to populate it with your own data. You can get more information on the extension from it's PEAR page.