The php|architect folks have released their latest newscast episode - the one for November 22, 2007. Topics mentioned in this episode include:

• php|architect's new site
• PHP 5.2.5's release
• FastCGI and PHP
• What's coming up in PHP 5.3

As always, you can grab the latest show directly from the site or subscribe to their feed to get this and other great episodes to keep up with all of the happenings of the PHP community.

In a new post to his blog today, Stuart Herbert continues the theme he started in a previous post about a business case for PHP. In this new entry, he shares some things he's done to further the effort.

To turn this from an idea into reality, I've setup a Google group where anyone who is interested can join in, and help build this resource. Please come along with your ideas and concerns, and let's see what we can achieve together.

He also suggests some "first steps" to get the ball rolling, namely a list of topics the business case needs to cover.

In a new blog post, Ligaya Turmelle reminds us about the Call for Papers that's still open for this year's OSCON - but not for much longer.

Anyway, here is the link for submitting a proposal and the currently listed tracks include Linux, PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, Java, Databases, Desktop Applications, Web Applications (client-side and server-side), Windows, Administration, Security, and Emerging Topics.

The deadline for entry is this coming Monday, February 5th (2007) and all entrants much submit the form for their entries to be considered.

Pierre points out one of the other PHP conferences happening this fall, December 1st and 2nd of 2006.

The PHP Conference Brazil is an event in Brazil to strengthen the Brazilian community, and encourage relationships among the professionals that use the language.

The event will be happening the 1 and 2 of December with the support of the ProPHP group. Divided up into two days, the PHP Conference Brazil will have two keynote speakers and many diverse lectures on different themes related to PHP.

Topics they are looking to be covered include: PDO in PHP5, Design Patterns, creation/use o fextensions in PHP, web services, Smarty, and the Zend Certification. There will also be another track of more beginner/intermediate level talks to give people just starting out a leg up.

You can get complete information from the conference website, including a map to the location and how to submit your talks for consideration.

DevShed continues their look at creating a simple treaded discussion foum with part two in the series, a focus on creating the administrator panel to help you manage users and the topics/comments they make.

This article, the second of two parts, will show you how to set up an administration area for a threaded discussion forum, and some of the functions you might want an administrator to manage.

Included is the functionality to get a listing of all of the topics, delete topics quickly, start a new topics, and manage a "blacklist" of bad words to keep out of the discussions. Of course, the code is all there and they explain each piece of it. They keep it simple though - the code is pretty procedural with only functions dividing up the functionality into the pieces.

The folks over at php|architect have release another resource to help get you certified as a Zend Certified Engineer - the Zend PHP 5 Certification Study Guide.

php|architect's Zend PHP 5 Certification Study Guide, edited and produced by the publishers of php|architect, provides the most comprehensive and thorough preparation tool for developers who wish to take the exam.

This book provides complete coverage of every topic that is part of the exam, for more information, see the chapters & source code.

Chapters for the book cover topics like the PHP basics, Strings and Patterns, Object Oriented Programming, Security, and XML/Web Services. Check out this sample chapter to get a taste of what's inside.

Also, check out the blog entries on the book from the two authors - Ben Ramsey and Davey Shafik.

Tobias Schlitt shares some of his toughts on one of his latest in a list of books to read - Exporing PHP.

Although I did not read it, yet, I'd like to recommend it to you, since I think to know the authors good enough to believe they write good books.

In short, "Exploring PHP" is a roundup about advanced PHP programming experiences, covering different topics like: Event driven programming in PHP, Generation of 3D graphics, Refactoring and Migration, PHP6.

From the little that he's looked into the book, he can already tell it's a good resource and is recommending it based on that and the authors it comes from.

As all good sites must do, the ThinkingPHP blog is moving onward and upward in its focus, and according to this new post, that only means good things for PHPers.

You might have noticed that I changed the title of this blog to "ThinkingPHP and beyond" a couple days ago. I did that because currently I'm thinking a lot about where go with it. I definetly want to stay focused on PHP in general, but I feel like I (and a lot of other php developers) actually work with a lot more technologies then "just" php. So I'd like to talk about that as well.

Some of the other topics Felix is considering talking about include PHP coding practices, web standards/usability/accessibility, web services, and agile development topics. Keep an eye out here for more to come from this great blog - we'll always post the latest.

With a "post-exam post" today, Jad has come back from the testing center fresh out of the new Zend PHP5 Certification exam with a few comments.

I just came back from the test centre; The exam was really great and joy to take, all topics were equally covered but if you are planning to book then I'd suggest not to make a general read but read in details about everything even stuff you aren't likely to use or you are not used to use in your daily dose of code.

He gives examples of questions of different types - syntax, general functionality differences, differences between PHP4 and PHP5, etc. He also specifically mentions some of the questions covering exceptions, SOAP, inferfaces, SimpleXML and more. He recommends reading up on pretty much every topic on their list.

Laura Thomson is reporting back over on her blog with the latest from her experiences at this year's OSCON, mentioning today the "Lightening Talks" that she and George Schlossnagle are doing on Wednesday.

On Wednesday George and I are moderating the PHP Lightning talks at OSCON. The Perl ones have been running for years and are a lot of fun.

If you have something PHP related to talk about, please come and talk to us about it. The talks are really short (5 minutes) and minimal preparation is required. If you have never given a conference talk before, this is a great way to start. Or, if you've given lots of talks but really need to rant about something, this is your opportunity.

If you're there and have a topic you'd like to hear about during the talks, drop them a line at lightningtalks-oscon2006@omniti.com with the topic and a short summary.