In a moment of divine inspiration (well, at least a thought that passed through his head at the bus stop), Lukas Smith has thought up and is proposing a group to help promote and advocate PHP, one he calls emPHPower.

emPHPower should be a mediator between various (potential) participants in the PHP world. As such emPHPower could serve as a mediator between the PHP.net developers and its user base, between corporations and PHP.net, between corporations and grass roots organizers etc. [...] There are is fundamental concept that I see in this vision: emPHPower is a mediator and catalyst that empowers members of the community to follow their own ideas.

He talks more about the actual "doing" of his ideas and mentions things like the project's budget and where it would come from - the possibility of member fees (based somehow on cost of living).

In this post on SomeCoders.com, they start a series of tutorials centered around the creation of a member management system for your site with the help of PHP, Ajax, and script.aculo.us.

In part one of the article, they talk about setting up the database and the backend code as well as writing the email verification piece and allowing registered users to log in and log out of the system. They give you the code for every step of the way, and include explainations where needed. The code is mostly procedural, so don't worry if you haven't messed with object-oriented functionality in PHP.