On the IBuildings blog Cal Evans has taken a look at the Windows caching technology (some recently released) from a management perspective and where it fits in the overall Windows caching toolsets available.

As PHP extends its reach further into corporate networks, IT managers have yet another technology that they have to understand so that they can properly deploy. In many situations, PHP code is being developed that - running on its own - creates a bad user experience because of the nature of the language. [...] Much of this delay, and the user unhappiness that always accompanies it, can be mitigated with the proper opcode caching solution. The list in this article was compiled to help managers understand what their options they have. These are the most popular or recent PHP opcode caching solutions.

He lists three of the more popular choices - the Alternative PHP Cachie, Zend Optimizer+ and the WinCache - touching briefly on what each has to offer.

On the Ibuildings blog today Ivo Jansch has posted a look at PHP 5.3 from a slightly different perspective - how development with it affects the management.

At our Techportal Cal Evans gave an overview of the important changes, to make migration easier for developers. In this post,I'm going to look at the migration from a less technical angle, and explain when migration to PHP 5.3 is a good idea and when not.

He talks about why you should consider the move up to PHP 5.3 and some of the things you should use to handle (and pay attention to) the migration.

Mikko Koppanen is back to blogging with this new post today - it's a look at another example with ImageMagick. It shows how to distort an image but keep its perspective.

I took some time to actually understand the perspective transformations properly using the excellent ImageMagick examples (mainly created by Anthony Thyssen) as a reference. The basic idea of perspective distortion seems simple: to distort the control points to new locations.

His example uses a checkerboard as the image to manipulate and, based on an array of settings (source, destination) sets control points for the image to twist and turn from. The final output is echoed from a call to distortImage.

With more and more frameworks popping up every day in the PHP community, it's important to ask yourself one question - should I learn a framework? Ian Christian tries to answer that question in a recent post to his blog.

With other programming languages designed for the web, there's typically a framework that works hand in hand. [...] I imagine people will always write from the ground up with PHP, some people do it to learn, some I suspect think there's nothing out there that can do what they want, where as others perhaps do it just to prove themselves, or to gain fame. Good luck to them all, some of them are probably going to do a good job, but alas - I imagine most are wasting their time.

He breaks his opinions out into two sides of the argument - the business issues and the developer side, each with their own plusses and minuses. Overall, though, he definitely suggests learning some kind of framework, even if you don't end up working with it - it's just good experience.

With the new year upon us, lots of PHP developers in the community have taken time to look back at this past year, both in their own lives and in the time they've spent in the community. Here's just a few:

• Nick Halsead
• Elizabeth Smith
• Matthew Turland
• Ivo Jansch
• Sebastian Bergmann
• Davey Shafik Matthew Weir O'Phinney

Stay tuned to this post for more contributions from the community as they are posted.

A new article over on Stefan Mischook's blog today talks about why PHP should be the language of choice as told from a business mindset.

I have written this article to speak to business owners and other non-nerd types. [...] I concentrate on the business arguments and only touch on the technological issues underlying them … when it makes sense to mention the nerd stuff.

He talks about answers to the "business questions" (like "Is the language reliable?"), about how PHP was made for the web not adapted to it and a quick story of his own to back up his points (started a project with Java and moved to PHP for thousands of dollars in savings).

To ring in the new year of 2007, several developers around the PHP community have posted their looks back at the events of 2006. Each of them has their own twist and own perspectives on things, so be sure to check them all out:

• Sara Golemon's look at the year through the mailing list
• a Zender's perspecttive from Andi Gutmans
• an overview of the year from Ligaya Turmelle
• a more personal look from Davey Shafik
• a look at things from a PEAR perspective from Greg Beaver
• Aaron Wormus' past year
• a quick look from Wez Furlong