Lorna Mitchell has posted a review she's done of the Packt Publishing book "RESTful PHP Web Services" (by Samisa Abeysinghe).
Overall it was well-written (with only as many spelling mistakes as any other PHP book) and clearly organised. [...] Very few services that claim to be RESTful actually are, which makes writing anything along these lines very tricky, however I did feel the author could have been clearer about why having a single URL and a parameter for which action should be performed, doesn't fit well. We do get a sense of excitement about services as ways to "glue together" bits of data on the net, and the possibilities of exposing and consuming information in this way.
She talks about the quality of the technical content (including the "very thorough" non-framework examples and Zend Framework example) and some of the extra baggage she felt it could do without - specifically the overhead that adding the Zend Framework could add.
Mike Lively has a new review of a book from Packt Publshing (authored by Martin Brampton) - PHP5 CMS Framework Development.
Upon reading through the book I have found that it gives an excellent case study of Martin Brampton's approach to CMS design and implementation. [...] One might be concerned that the ideas in this book are slanted towards how Brampton decided to implement various aspects of Aliro. While it is true that much of the book uses code directly out of Aliro, I feel that he did take the time to make sure he explained the reasons for the design and development decisions he made.
The more he read through the book, the more Mike felt like it was a case study of the Aliro CMS rather than a true look at CMS building in PHP5. He (Mike) lays out some of the contents of the book including the look at common CMS functionality, code organization, extensions and internationalization.
WebReference.com continues their series looking at user administration in content management systems. This time they look at the importance of user roles and some code to add to help manage them.
Although the operations are simple, it is vital that they be handled correctly. It is generally a poor principle to allow access to the mechanisms of a system rather than providing an interface through class methods. The latter approach ideally allows the creation of a robust interface that changes relatively infrequently, while details of implementation can be modified without affecting the rest of the system.
Their code includes methods to get all roles for a user, check to see which they are permitted to use, add a "permit" role and remove it back out. The tutorial is an excerpt from the Packt book PHP5 CMS Framework Development (Martin Brampton).
In an excerpt from this book from Packt Publishing, Martin Brampton look sat access control for content management systems and considerations that need to be made to make it effective.
Now we have some ideas about database, we quickly run into another requirement. Many websites will want to control who has access to what. Once embarked on this route, it turns out there are many situations where access control is appropriate, and they can easily become very complex. In this chapter we look at the most highly regarded model'"role-based access control'"and find ways to implement it. The aim is to achieve a flexible and efficient implementation that can be exploited by increasingly sophisticated software.
He looks a the different kinds of access control (discretionary access control, mandatory access control) and topics surrounding them like:
Adding Hierarchy
Avoiding Unnecessary Restrictions
Special Roles
Implementation Efficiency
Real Difficulties
The tutorial finishes up with the start of a hierarchical access control system (including a few screenshots showing the tables and their relationships).
On the Ibuildings blog today Marcello Duarte has a new review of the Packt Publishing book "PHP5 CMS Framework Development" (by Martin Brampton).
Martin left Mambo (before they announced to drop support for PHP4 last September) to write his own CMS and "evolve out of the Mambo history", by taking advantage of PHP5 OO enhancements. The result is Aliro: a CMS, a framework and an extension project with traits and genes of the Mambo family. Aliro code is used throughout the book to support and illustrate his presentation.
Topics of the different chapters include basic CMS system needs, organizing code, extensions and editing and presenting content.
He includes some of the criteria he'll be using to judge based on including the list of features it includes, how quality is the code, what sort of state the documentation is in and how much of a community it has around it.
Packt Publishing has made an announcement about a new book that's just been released - "MediaWiki Skins Design" (by Richard Carter).
From their release notes:
This book takes users through customizing their MediaWiki skin. It is full of practical examples of MediaWiki skinning techniques, and provides a clear explanation of how MediaWiki skinning works and the necessary template and CSS customizations required to completely alter MediaWiki's appearance.
The book has appeal for both web developers and wiki administrators by helping them update the look and feel of their MediaWiki site. You can find more information on the book on its page on the Packt Publishing website.
On the KillerPHP blog Stefan Mischookshares a sample chapter from a recent PHP-related book published by Packt, "PHP 5 CMS Framework Development":
The people at Packt Publishing just sent me a free sample chapter (in PDF format) of their latest PHP book (PHP5 CMS Framework Development) for me to pass on to you guys.
The sample chapter looks at access control in a CMS application. Stefan also includes a brief outline of the contents of the remainder of the book. Other chapters cover topics like decreasing code bloat, security, specialized handlers and localization.
Jonathan Snook has written up a book review of a recent Packt Publishing book "CakePHP Application Development".
The folks at Packt were kind enough to send me a copy and it turned out to be a fairly quick read. It's 300 pages of good starting knowledge. The book is targeted as an introduction to the framework and not meant as a definitive guide (to which the book would likely need to be three times the size to accomplish).
He details some of the contents of the book (not chapter by chapter though) and some of the things that did and didn't work.
Chris Hartjes has posted a review of one of the many PHP books that Packt Publishing has to offer - "CakePHP Application Development".
A few weeks ago I was approached by Pakt Publishing and asked if I was interested in reviewing the recent CakePHP book 'CakePHP Application Development' by Ahsanul Bari and Anupom Syam. [...] Naturally, several books about the framework have been published in the past few months, and I can't think of a better book to recommend to people interested in learning the framework than this one.
He looks at some of "The Good" (like the sample applications and examples the book provides) and some of "The Bad" where it falls a bit short (like the lack of good server config information and no mention of the built-in testing functionality) to the obvious "Ugly" - that CakePHP, like any other framework out there, is a constantly moving target that's hard to pin down in a book that takes months to write and print.
David Goodwin has posted a new book review of a PHP book offered by Packt Publishing (released Sept 22, 2007) - "PHP Web 2.0 Mashup Projects" by Shu-Wai Chow.
Some time ago, Packt publishing sent me this book to review. Here it is, being somewhat overdue!
He talks about the book's contents - the different chapters detailing the different services' APIs, the protocols that are used to talk to those services and the data formats your scripts would have to be able to talk in to communicate. He recommends the book to those looking to get started with mashups specifically, but warns that in some places the book tends to "reinvent the wheel" rather than using classes/packages that already exist.
On the PHPClasses.org website there's a new book review posted from Alexandre Altair de Melo about a new book from Packt Publishing - "PHP 5 CMS Framework Development" (by Martin Brampton).
Often developers have to think about several aspects of the architecture of a system for the Web, not necessarily restricted to requirements of the software. With this in mind the book "PHP 5 CMS - Framework Development" is very rewarding reading.
Alexandretalks about the author of the book, the wide range of topics discussed in it (some not just applying to CMSes) and a breakdown of the contents of each chapter.
It is great work from the book author and the publisher, as we now have another great title, not only about PHP, but also about designing an architecture for software not just for only for creating content management systems.
The book was published prior to Facebook's facelift but this doesn't really impact on the usefulness of the book. An overview of FBML, FQL, FBJS (a restricted subset of JavaScript and enforced for security reasons) are given along with information on how to use the test consoles, publish to news feeds, some multimedia aspects of what can be done in Facebook applications and more.
He notes that the book focuses on a PHP5-only world for developing the apps and opts for MySQL as the database of choice. Overall, he found it useful - more so than the online documentation, especially for beginners.
Over on the PHP Zone (from the DZone community site) there's a in-depth tutorial looking at the creation and management of an access control system (users, passwords and what they can do) in your PHP application. It's an excerpt from the Packt book PHP5 CMS Framework Development.
Many websites will want to control who has access to what. Once embarked on this route, it turns out there are many situations where access control is appropriate, and they can easily become very complex. So in this chapter we look at the most highly regarded model role-based access control and find ways to implement it. The aim is to achieve a flexible and efficient implementation that can be exploited by increasingly sophisticated software. To show what is going on, the example of a file repository extension is used.
They talk about some of the general considerations about access control (limiting the number of rules, common difficulties) and plenty of code/database schema to get you started.
The Zend Developer Zone has posted a new book review (from Ivo Jansch) about a recently release offering from Packt Publishing - "Mastering phpMyAdmin for Effective MySQL Management" (by Marc Delisle).
I mainly use phpMyAdmin for 2 things: browsing the data in the database, and changing the structure of a database. Those are pretty straightforward features, so when packt publishing asked me to review a book on phpMyAdmin, I initially wondered how they could write an entire book on phpmyadmin.
Ivo was pleasantly surprised at the features of the popular database management tool the book covered and notes that it does a great job of explaining the features a config options the tool has to offer. He notes that there's a pretty broad target audience for the book - everyone from the beginner out to the experienced developer wanting to know know about this popular application.
Stefan Priebsch has posted a book review of Packt Publishing's "Mastering phpMyAdmin" (by Marc Delisle of the phpMyAdmin team).
Kshipra Singh of Packt Publishing was kind enough to send me a copy of Mastering phpMyAdmin 2.11 For Effective MySQL Management to review. The author is Marc Delisle, phpMyAdmin developer and one of the project administrators since 2001. You probably can't get a better author for that kind of book.
Stefantalks about a few of the chapters - the introductory material, one on exporting database structure and data, a look at the relational system and a look at bookmarks (a way of storing statements for later use). He does recommend the book, though, noting that it's crammed with enough information to make it worth the price.
Kae Verens has posted a review of another of Packt Publishing's PHP-related offerings, "Learning PHP Data Objects" by Dennis Popel (published in Aug 2007).
Learning PHP Data Objects, by Dennis Popel, is an introduction to PDO, which walks through the building of a believable test example - a library manager for your home library. [...] I really couldn't find very much about this book that I didn't like. Ignoring the appendices, the book is 154 pages purely devoted to teaching PDO through examples, including error handling, working with BLOBs, even the creation of the M in MVC (Models).
The review mentions Models, Active Record and how the book creates a Library manager application that includes the use of prepared statements and transactions.
The Zend Developer Zone has posted a book review of an Packt book, "Building Websites with Joomla! 1.5" (by Hagen Graf - the book, not the review):
The book is a tutorial guide to Joomla! 1.5 and was already written and published during the development of Joomla! 1.5. This is the final version and it aims for "web developers, designers, webmasters, content editors and marketing professionals" and is suitable for anyone starting out with Joomla! 1.5, for people who upgrade to Joomla 1.5 and for those who just want a good printed guide/manual at hand.
The review steps through the chapters, highlighting points of interest and the wrapup uses terms like "great instructional value", "very passionate about Joomla!" and the fact that the only thing the reviewer sees missing of a chapter about security.
Stuart Herbert has posted his review of a book from Packt Publishing covering one of the most popular PHP-based database administration packages out there, phpMyAdmin, "Mastering phpMyAdmin 2.11 for Effective MySQL Management".
Mastering phpMyAdmin 2.11 for Effective MySQL Management by Marc Delisle is the third edition of this book, and it follows the usual pattern of Packt Publishing books. The book has clearly defined objectives on the cover, and it follows a clear progression of its chosen subject from start to end. It is well presented, with a clear layout and clean page design that makes it easy to read.
Stuart gives a high-level overview of both phpMyAdmin ("it feels like phpMyAdmin as been around forever") and the book with an index of the topics covered.
Rob Allen has posted his review of another PHP-related book from Packt Publishing, "Object-oriented Programming with PHP5":
Packt Publishing recently sent me a couple of books to review, so let's start with Object-Oriented Programming with PHP5 by Hasin Hayder. According to the introduction, the book is intended for beginners to intermediate PHP5 programmers and the first chapter has a good introduction to what object oriented programming is and why you would want to use it.
He glosses over the first few chapters of the book (introductory stuff mostly) and points out three others specifically - Chapter 5 covering reflection and unit testing, Chapter 6 covering the SPL and Chapter 9 dealing with SimpleXML and DOM.
Rob Allen has posted a review of the Packt Publishing book "Learning PHP Data Objects" over on his blog today:
Packt Publishing recently sent me a couple of books to review. This post is about the second one I received, Learning PHP Data Objects by Dennis Popel. I was excited to receive this book as PDO underlies a lot of the Zend_Db_Adapter objects that I use in my day to day programming. It seemed like a good idea that I should know more about it.
He provides some good detail of what the book covers (chapter by chapter) as well as a summary including his recommendation for who should use the book and how they can best enjoy its contents.
Putting the aspects of Hayder's grasp of the English language aside, the book is rather good as an introduction to the various technologies that it covers.
He points out a few things of note - the beginner OOP chapters (only made for the newbies out there), the contents of the main OOP chapter and the good section on PHPUnit and unit testing. He also has a few suggestions of things that could make the book a bit better, including a personal suggestion on code formating and braces.
PHPClasses.org has posted a review of a new PHP-related book from Packt Publishing, "Building Websites with Joomla! 1.5":
This book is a tutorial guide to Joomla! 1.5. It was written and published during the development of Joomla! 1.5. It is intended for Web developers, designers, Web masters, content editors and marketing professionals. It is suitable for anyone starting out with Joomla! 1.5, for people who upgrade to Joomla! 1.5, and for those who just want have a good printed manual at hand.
R.L. (the reviewer) goes through some of the chapters, detailing their content including some of the software mentioned in them (like Fireboard and DOCman). He recommends the book to anyone looking for a good in-hand Joomla! resource but notes that a chapter on security would have been a nice addition.
Kae Verens has posted a new book review of one of Packt Publising's latest PHP-related offerings, "Mastering phpMyAdmin 2.11 for Effective MySQL Management":
In short, my review is this: overall, the book detailed everything I can think of (and more) about phpMyAdmin - I learned about some features in phpMyAdmin that I was not already aware of. I would ask for less screenshots, more how-tos and less 3rd-person speech for the next revision, but if there are any questions I have about phpMyAdmin, the answer is in this book.
The review gets into more detail about the book - its structure, the wealth of content in it (including some unknown features) and a few things that could have been better. Kae mentions a few places where the author "forgets that the reader does not know the subject" and gets a bit too technical too fast. The screenshots, while good in moderation, overpowered parts of the chapters and made them harder to follow.
PHPClasses.org has posted a new book review today. It's a look at another of Hasin Hayder's books, this one published by Packt - Object-Oriented Programming with PHP5 (as reviewed by Ryan Partington).
"Object Oriented Programming with PHP5" is a book that helps understanding many of the core OOP features within PHP, whilst looking at the Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern and unit testing.
Ryan comments of a few issues he found with the book include the not-quite-an-introduction-level first chapter and the "More OOP" section that read like a copy of the php.net manual. Overall, though, his opinion is that it's a good book and provides a good overview of database functionality and the MVC design pattern.
The Zend Developer Zone has posted a sample chapter from a new book Packt Publishing has put out called "Pro PHP, Patterns, Frameworks, Testing and more by Kevin McArthur.
The sample chapter looks (obviously) at the SPL, the Standard PHP Library - functions included with PHP5 releases to accomplish some pretty cool things.
Planning to write a few extensions for site's I host I was looking for a book that could at least in part be a replacement for this documentation. As I went through the site of Pact publishing My eye fell on this particular book because of the example chapter they show. And indeed now I have the book I'm in no way disappointed.
He mentions the target audience of the book (and how well it hits it), the approach the book takes to the topics it covers and specific looks at several of the chapter topics like web services, error handling, security and plug-in structure.
The PHPClasses.org website has posted their book review of a recent Packt Publishing book targeted at introducing you to one of the PHP frameworks growing in recent popularity - CodeIgniter - "CodeIgniter for Rapid PHP Application Development".
I started reading "CodeIgniter for Rapid PHP Application Development" as a novice. This book is specially targeted to anybody like me: little or no prior experience of Object Oriented Programming or the MVC approach, with couple of years procedural PHP experience, and is after something that can really take you to the next level.
The reviewer (Ryan Partington) talks about what the CodeIgniter framework is, his struggle with the MVC concept, how the book is divided up and the benchmarking of framework applications.
Over on the Zend Developer Zone today, Akash Mehta has written up a review of a book from Packt Publishing, "PHP Web 2.0 Mashups" (by Shu-Wai Chow):
As it's title suggests, PHP Web 2.0 Mashup Projects is a demonstration of the various techniques available for developing mashups in PHP. Through a highly practical format, Shu-Wai takes the reader through a series of projects utilising different web services and APIs, while carefully exposing the reader to a wide variety of technologies and data formats.
With careful selection and shaping of language, the book is an extremely effective introduction to the world of mashup development with PHP.
Akashtalks about the contents of the book (the different projects it covers) and how the book provides a version useful resource to those just getting into the mashup world - a reference guide to some of the popular data transfer methods/formats out there.
I received an e-mail recently from a very nice gentleman at Packt Publishing - their representative asked if I would be willing to review one of their books, namely PHP Web 2.0 Mashup Projects by Shu-Wai Chow. Reviewing books is not something I had done before, so I thought I would give it a good old-fashioned college try.
He mentions the size of the book (and how it's not an indication of the quality) and the basic structure of the book, including spotlights on some of the specific topics covered.
The Zend Developer Zone has posted a new episode of their PHP Abstract podcast series - Matthew Turland with a book review of Packt's "PHP Web 2.0 Mashup Projects".
Today's special guest is Matthew Turland (Elazar to those of you who hang out on the #phpc channel on irc.freenode.net) Matt has been building PHP applications since 2002. [...] Today, Matt is going to review PHP Web 2.0 Mashup Projects from Packt Publishing.
You know the drill - there's three ways to grab the PHP goodness: the mp3, the in-page player and, the most convenient, subscribing to their feed and getting the latest episodes hand-delivered.
The Zend Developer Zone has posted a review of Packt Publishing's "Learning PHP Data Objects" book writen up by Akash Mehta.
In Learning PHP Data Objects, the author Dennis Popel examines this new [database access] system and explains how to begin using PDO in development as a replacement for typical database drivers. The book is an excellent introduction to the data abstraction layer and also provides essential insight into the inner workings of database interaction with PHP.
Akash talks briefly about the history of PDO and what it can be used for first, then gets into the contents of the book (things like the intro chapters and the quality of the writing). The thing he thinks makes the bok stand out, though, is the examples and sample code that reflect both simple methods and more complex issues PDO developers might run into.
This book will teach users to understand the core object-oriented programming concepts with PHP and to write manageable applications with ease.
Here's the official press release from Packt on the book:
Learn Object-Oriented Programming with PHP5 with new book from Packt
Packt is pleased to announce the release of a new book titled Object-Oriented Programming with PHP5. Written by Hasin Hayder, this book will teach users to understand the core object-oriented programming concepts with PHP and to write manageable applications with ease.
Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm that uses "objects" and their interactions to design applications and computer programs. It was basically introduced to ease the development process as well as reduce the time of development by reducing the amount of code needed.
PHP is one of the most popular languages for web application development, and PHP5 supports OOP very well. This book will help users to master core OOP features in PHP as well as advanced Topics like Design Patterns including Model-View-Controller (MVC), and Unit Testing.
Comprehensive documentation and working examples on the Standard PHP Library (SPL), which are hard to find elsewhere, are provided in this book. Users will find this book useful to leverage PHP's OOP features to write manageable applications with ease.
Object-Oriented Programming with PHP5 is published and is available with Packt. For more information about this book, please visit www.PacktPub.com
Rob Richards has posted his own review of the Packt Publishing book "PHP Oracle Web Development" to his blog today.
Overrall I would have to say that PHP Oracle Web Development is a good book for a PHP developer needing to get up to speed quickly working with an Oracle database. [...] The only place I found the book lacking was the initial setup of the environment.
The environment they chose to go with was a Windows setup which caused him problem when he tried to compile with the oci8 extensions - libraries weren't found where they were needed. His solution? Setting his ORACLE_HOME to the right location then all was well.
The PHPClasses.org website has posted their review of a Packt Publishing book covering PDO - "Learning PHP Data Objects" (by Dennis Poppel).
In Learning PHP Data Objects, the author, Dennis Popel, examines this new system and explains how to begin using PDO in development as a replacement for typical database drivers. The book is an excellent introduction to the data abstraction layer. It also provides essential insight into the inner workings of database interaction with PHP.
The review talks about the contents of the book, what PDO is/how it's used and how well the book hits the mark for its target audience.
Knut Urdalen has written up a book review of a new release from the Packt Publishing folks - "Managing eZ Publish Web Content Management Projects" by Matrin Bauer.
He talks about the contents of the book - information on the phases of a project life cycle - and the level of technical knowledge that's required to understand it. He condones the book and recommends it specifically to project managers looking to get a bit more insight into what's happening with their eZ Publish projects.
Jason Sweat has written up a review of Packt Publishing's latest PHP-related offering (well, one of them) - "PHP Oracle Web Development".
I was recently given the opportunity to review a new book on the subject of PHP and Oracle databases. We use Oracle databases nearly exclusively at work, so this seemed like a good opportunity to me.
Jason talks about the book in general (mentioning something I hadn't seen an other reviews of the book - what else the author does besides writing books) and moves on to look at each of the chapters a bit more in depth. He notes, though, that the book seems to try to aim at a general Oracle audience wanting to learn PHP, developers might be better off picking up something that starts from scratch rather than tries to jump in in the middle.
Lorenzo Alberton has posted a book review of one of Packt Publishing's latest books "PHP Oracle Web Development".
A while ago the fine people at Packt Publishing sent me a copy of Yuli Vasiliev's "PHP Oracle Web Development". The book consists in almost 400 pages of solid content, and is targeted at beginners-to-intermediate PHP and Oracle developers who want to learn or have a deeper understanding of the interaction of the two technologies.
He talks about the contents of the book, some of the parts he found the most interesting and a mention of the writing style.
He includes a high-level overview of what the book contains, but notes that he couldn't get a hold of the code examples mentioned in the book (no CD and couldn't find it on their site). Overall, he found it a good book - it's a good primer to PDO in PHP, but you'll need to know SQL beforehand to work with it. He suggests that it's more of a one or two time read, though - not much in the way of a reference to come back to.
Lukas Smith has posted his review of a book from Packt Publishing - "PHP Web 2.0 Mashup Projects: Practical PHP Mashups with Google Maps, Flickr, Amazon, YouTube, MSN Search, Yahoo!"
Duane from Pakt asked me if I would be interested in reviewing a few books for them in my blog. I picked "Mashup Projects" from the list of just released books, since I am interesting in the topic and I am actually going to give a presentation at the internal "PHP Day" we are doing at Optaros in November.
He points out the good (good writing style, well-chosen examples) and the bad (a log list of errors and oversights in the code). He also talks about the contents of the book - the different examples and the final more major project. Overall though, he sees it as a good book, one that would be a good introduction to mashups for PHP developers (if you look past the formatting issues).
Christopher Jones has posted a review of one of the latest PHP-related books published by Packt Publishing - "PHP Oracle Web Development":
Yuli Vasiliev has put a lot of real-world PHP and Oracle experience into his book PHP Oracle Web Development. The book's reviewer, Arup Nanda, was, amongst other things, Oracle's DBA of the Year in 2003. The result is an excellent book that joins the PHP and Oracle worlds together.
Christophertalks about some of what the book covers (like installation and code snippets) and the book's excellent focus on different topics, giving each it's own full coverage.
The PHPClasses.org website has a new book review posted today covering one of Packt Publishing's PHP-related publications: "PHP Programming with PEAR".
If you want to learn how to use the most relevant PEAR packages with great detail, "PHP Programming with PEAR" must be in your bookshelf, definitely. [...] "PHP Programming with PEAR" is a mandatory book, especially if you are thinking about using PEAR on a daily basis to increase your productivity, or if want to improve your skills on the use of the covered packages.
The reviewer, Marcelo Santos Araujo, goes into a bit of detail on the contents of the book too - chapters talking about MDB2, data display packages, working with XML, web services and date/time functionality.
Packt Publishing has just released one of their latest PHP-related books just for the frameworkers out there looking to get introduced to one of the easiest to use PHP frameworks on the web - CodeIgniter. The book, "CodeIgniter for Rapid PHP Application Development", was written by David Upton director of a specialized management company. Here's Packt's official description from the press release:
This book explains how to work with CodeIgniter in a clear and logical manner. It is not a detailed guide to the syntax of CodeIgniter, but makes an ideal complement to the existing online CodeIgniter user guide, helping you grasp the bigger picture and bringing together many ideas to get your application development started as smoothly as possible.
[...] CodeIgniter for Rapid PHP Application Development is out now and is written for developers who are new to CodeIgniter. Basic skills in PHP and MySQL are required, but only rudimentary object-oriented knowledge is required.
You can purchase the book at your retialer of choice or you can get more information on the book itself from this page on the Packt Publishing website.
Stoyan Stefanovpoints out that the CMS nomination awards have now been opened for public voting (of which he is one of the judges of the PHP category). The event is put on by Packt Publishing:
The Packt Open Source Content Management System Award is designed to encourage, support, recognize and reward an Open Source Content Management System (CMS) that has been selected by a panel of judges and visitors to www.PacktPub.com. Following on from the success of 2006, Packt has expanded the Award for 2007 with an increase in prize money and the addition of new categories.
There are five different categories this year:
Overall Winner
Most Promising Open Source CMS
Best Open Source PHP CMS
Best Other Open Source CMS
Best Social Networking CMS
You can nominate your favorite CMS from the Packt site for each of the categories. The nominations only last until August 31st, so get in there and get your vote in!
This year's Packt Publishing awards for the best Open Source CMS are on their way, starting middle of July. I've been selected as a judge in the PHP CMS category. [...] How can one judge something as diverse and liquid as a CMS? Content management comes in all different shapes, some systems focus on solving some problems and they do a better job than another CMS that mainly tackles different types of problems.
He shares the experiences he's had with CMS and companies that have rolled their own in the past as well as a small list of things that he's thinking about making "the standard" for the CMSes to be judged by. Also included is a lengthy list of requirements that he sees that need to be included for any decent CMS to move to the next level.
Travis Swicegood has posted a book review he's done on the PEAR Installer Manifesto, a book by Greg Beaver detailing the use of the PEAR installer, channels and the creation of a blogging application to put them both to use.
From Travis' review:
This past weekend I read through the PEAR Installer Manifesto. For anyone who's not familiar the PEAR installer and how it can be used in projects outside of PEAR, I would point them to this book. [...] This is a four star rating, so there were a few things that weren't exactly what I had hoped for. I hoped this would serve as a full reference to the installer. While this book takes you a lot of great jumping off points, it doesn't have the thoroughness I wanted.
The book does cover things like how to create and work with PEAR channels and how to create a custom plug-in system by embedding the Installer into an application. Overall, he gives the book positive marks with only a few complaints (like the lack of a full reference to the installer being included).
Cal Evans of the Zend Developer Zone has posted a new book review of one of Packt Publishing's latest PHP-related offerings - "PHP Programming with PEAR".
For those who have been living under a virtual rock for a while now, PEAR is the "PHP Extension and Application Repository". In a nutshell, it is a collection of classes, it's a framework, and it's a distribution system. Most importantly though, it's an excellent place to find the classes you need so you don't have to re-invent the wheel. (Ok, beginner's time is over, I promise).
PHP Programming with PEAR, written by Stephen Schmidt, Carsten Lucke, Stoyan Stefanov and Aaron Wormus, takes a look at some important PEAR classes and how you can use them.
He mentions what the book covers (which packages) and highlights some of his favorite bits, including the chapter on web services.
This book originally started as two chapters in the recently released PEAR Book. After receiving the first chapter, a 70-page behemoth on the features available in package.xml version 2.0, the publisher decided this was too exciting and should be its own book.
Greg tals more about the contents of the book, all six chapters/270 pages, including some interesting ideas like using the PEAR Installer to maintain a live website. He also includes a link to be able to order it with a twenty percent discount (pre-order).
Another author of the Packt Publishing book PHP Programming with PEAR, Stoyan Stefanov has his own post talking about the book and listing out each of the packages covered inside.
His (hopefully) comprehensive list of packages covered includes:
Calendar
HTTP_Request
Services_Google
XML_RPC
XML_Serializer
...and many, many more. I haven't gotten a chance but to hear other's comments and check out a bit of this book, but it definitely sesms like a great resource for anyone wanting to get into using PEAR for their applications. Check out the Packt site for a full chapter listing of everything covered.
As he (Aaron Wormus) mentions in this new blog posting, the PEAR book from Packt publsihing has officially been released.
This is a collaboration between Stoyan Stefanov, Stephan Schmidt, Carsten Lucke and me. The original book was conceived way back at IPC2k4 so it's been in the pipeline for a while now.
Aaron talks about the contents of the book too - the different aspects of programming with PEAR with a more "solution-based" perspective (versus just dumping all of the information in your lap and shoving you out the door). He's also created an unofficial community wiki for the book to give things like reviews, comments, and other book-related things a place to live.
To prepare the way for the upcoming PEAR book from Packt Publishing correctly, Stoyan Stefanov has posted this info about the book and where to find the latest details on it.
Here's the link to publisher's page dedicated to the PHP Programming with PEAR. Guess who wrote the chapter for MDB2? ;)
It's an honour to me to be in the company of the other authors, people who have done a lot for the PEAR community
He also mentions some of the topics that the book will contain, including accessing databases with MDB2, creating and parsing XML documents, and accessing web APIs. The book is coming out in September, so keep on the lookout for it at your local bookseller soon.
The PHPit.net site has posted a book review today, a look at Packt Publishing's "AJAX and PHP: Building Responsive Web Applications".
Welcome to the first book review on PHPit, which is the first one in the new "Book Reviews" section on PHPit. There are many PHP & MySQL books these days, and more are being released every day, which makes it a hard task to pick a good PHP book. That's why I've decided to create this new section which will help you pick the best PHP books available. I will take a look at certain PHP books, and do a thorough review on each of them. Every review will end with a conclusion and a recommendation.
Overall, the review seems positive, though the reviewer notes that the book seems a bit basic at times. He mentions the basic contents - topics like Javascript, XML, XMLHttpRequest, and browser issues one might come across. Theses basics get you ready for the main two sections - client and server-side development. He n
