According to this article in The Register, more PHP developers (of the ones polled by Zend) prefer to do their actual development on a Windows platform, but still host their sites on something like Linux (as shown in the results of a Zend survey).

In a recent study from Zend Technologies, forty two per cent of PHP programmers named Windows as their primary development operating system. Linux came second, with 38.5 per cent, while Mac's OS X was third on 19.1 per cent. Zend did not say how many developers it spoke to, but called the December poll a "global survey" ranging from independent consultants to organizations with more than 5,000 employees.

The same survey shows that the choice of Linux for the server is still strong, and that the rest of the options (Windows, OS X) are trailing by a large percentage. You can read Zend's official press release on the survey on PRWeb.net.

Zend is looking for your input and help to set the roadmap for the popular Zend Framework. You can contribute via an online survey as mentioned by Matthew Weier O'Phinney on the Zend Deveveloper Zone today:

We need your input to help us better understand the way ZF is used in the real world, what's working and what isn't, and where you would like us to invest next. With ZF 2.0 work commencing soon - there has never been a better time to provide your feedback. Still not convinced? One of the respondents to the survey (providing meaningful answers) will be winning a slick 3rd generation iPod touch. Just be sure to provide your contact details so that we can let you know if you won (no worries - we won't be using your email for sending any promotional stuff).

The survey is pretty short (around 15-20 questions) and can help the ZF team get a better idea of what those using their tool like, dislike and what kinds of things they're using it with. This kind of information can be very useful when setting up the future of the framework.

The ThinkPHP blog (and Mayflower) are asking for your input on the current state of PHP architecture and what trends are out there.

What is the state of the art of PHP Architecture? Our CTO, Johann-Peter Hartmann, wants to know about it. Furthermore we want to know about the relevance of business goals during architecture creation. It would be great if you could help us filling out this survey, of course we'll publish it later. Please answer questions based on real-world experience and not what you would like to see

The survey asks about what architectural methods you know of, which are put into use in your work and how some of the requirements are defined. They also ask a little bit about planning - what tools you use for your plans (like a whiteboard, UML or good old pencil and paper).

Clay Loveless has started up a survey to gather more comprehensive information about the use of several PHP libraries and frameworks out in the general community.

I've created a more comprehensive survey about PHP frameworks, libraries, databases, evaluation techniques and other assorted tidbits in an attempt to better understand how people pick the libraries they do. My hope is that if enough people complete the survey, a picture will form that illustrates some itches that so many projects have been created to try to scratch.

The survey asks questions about current projects, system load, licensing and how important several different feature and non-feature considerations are in your development.

If you're a PHP developer in either the US or Canada, Esther Shindler is in need of your opinions (as mentioned by this post by Cal Evans on the Zend Developer Zone).

A friend of mine, Esther Shindler, contacted me recently to help her reach the PHP community. Since I don't know all of you (I'm really trying though) I'm reaching out to any US or Canadian PHP developers who have 10 minutes to spare and know two or three other US or Canadian PHP developers that might be willing to help as well. Here's all I need you to do: Take the survey and pass the link along to your other US and Canadian PHP developers buddies.

The target audience they're looking for to take this quiz are people working on open source tools in the US/Canada that regularly use one of the following: Joomla, phpBB, SugarCRM, Drupal, WordPress. If that fits you, head over and share your opinions (they might also contact you by phone for a follow-up).

Correcting himself from some previous comments concerning PHP 5 versus PHP 4 usage among developers, Marco Tabini has posted something new to his blog with some updated stats.

In the past, I have not been shy about sharing my opinion that the impending death of PHP 4 would have wreaked all sorts of havoc over the PHP world. I am glad to say that I've been wrong - dead wrong, in fact - and that I have never been as happy to be so far off the mark before.

According to a readers survey that the php|architect magazine ran (about a year ago even) PHP 5 is stronger than ever, taking up well over sixty percent of the usage with only a small part still hanging with PHP 4. Check out his graph for the full rankings.

Padraic Brady has pointed out the "new kid in town" when it comes to magazines about PHP - Enterprise PHP:

There is a new PHP magazine called "Enterprise PHP" available in English, German and French which might even console those missing the apparently ill-fated International PHP Magazine. Back before publication the usual tree of suspects led me to being interviewed for the initial edition published a short while back.

The current issue (which you can get for free after a survey) has articles looking at testing your PHP scripts, how "professional" it is to use PHP and the fact that Java is not PHP (wait, isn't that backwards?)

PHPBuilder is back with part two of their look at creating an online survey (part one is here) and pick up right where they left off:

Last time we set up our form, took the data from that form and emailed it to an email address of our choosing. This time we're going to take the same form data, put it in a database, read the total values and display them on a page.

You'll definitely need to check out part one before you try to tackle this one. They start with the creation of the tables you'll need (with some data to fill it out) and provide the code to handle the results of the submitted survey into those tables. They follow this up with a bit of output - a look at creating the "results" page for the user (or admin...whoever) to see the latest results from the survey's questions.

PHPBuilder.com has posted part one of their tutorial showing how to create a simple online survey system (from Brett Patterson/i>).

We've all come across some sort of online survey that asks a few questions about our interests or our online shopping experience. In this article we're going to walk you through the creation of a similar online survey that you can use on your own web site.

Their survey is just a simple 10-12 question format where the replies are handled in one of two ways - emailing the results out to an address or storing the information in a database to be reviewed later. The HTML code for the tutorial is also available.