According to this new post on the Zend Developer Zone, its parent company, Zend, has launched their Zend Product Online Documentation Center:

You know when you reach that point when you just don't remember where to configure your Zend Platform Events, how to set up your Tunneling, or what that Zend Core extension does? Well the documentation team at Zend have come up with a way to make all Zend product documentation as easily available as possible, so you can all benefit from our wisdom and experience.

The documentation center is a resource for all things Zendy - information on their products made searchable and easy to browse.

PageChain.net has posted a list of some "great places to go to" to learn PHP right now - some resources out on the web that can help you get started, provide examples and give you community to support you in your development.

Here are some resources to help you not only learn PHP, but also reference PHP information should you ever need it. This list isn't exhaustive, however, it should provide you with a lot of help when you need your PHP fix.

Some of the sites included in their list include:

• W3Schools PHP Tutorials
• Good PHP Tutorials
• PHPFreaks
• ONLamp

Alex Netkachov has written up some of his experience with the Zend Certification Exam in a recent post to his blog:

Zend Certification is an important step for a PHP developer. It is a very good chance to evaluate your skills, show your experience to your co-workers and potential customers.

He points out Zend's resource for all things ZCE, using the ZCE Yellow Pages to find others in your area and the process he went through to prepare for and take the exam. Oh, and in case you're wondering - yes, he passed.

Ivo Jansch has posted his review of the php|architect book about the Zend Framework by Cal Evans:

Before I voice my opinion, a disclaimer: I have met Cal personally; in fact I'm having diner with him next Monday, I'm writing a book for php|architect, and my company is a Zend partner. I could not be any more biased. If you still trust my judgement (and I will try to remain objective), read on.

Ivo mentions the important things - like how fun the book is to read (a book about a framework, who knew?) and what sort of things it covers. Components of the framework are mentioned but so are things like caching, layouts and web services. I'd give away the ending but that wouldn't be any fun so go check out his unbiased opinion of hos the book turned out.

The Zend Developer Zone has pointed out a new course that's offered by Zend to help experienced programmers further their PHP education - Zend Quick Start: PHP for Experienced Programmers.

This course covers many of the same topics as both the PHP I: Foundations and PHP II: Higher Structures classes but at an accelerated rate with special emphasis on the differences between PHP and other commonly used languages.

The next session of the course starts on April 29th and will last through May 16th. There will be nine sessions during that time for two hours at a time. You can get full details, including how to reserve your spot, on the course's page on the Zend website.

As posted on the Zend Developer Zone today, Zend has issued their Call for Papers for this year's Zend/PHP Conference and Expo happening this September at the Santa Clara Convention Center.

Zend invites submissions to the Zend/PHP Conference and Expo, ZendCon08, which will be held September 15-18 at the Santa Clara Convention Center. ZendCon is the largest gathering of the PHP community and is the one time a year to mingle with the core developers, business leaders, and prominent members of the PHP community.

This year's conference program will include competitively selected presentations, tutorials, and invited speakers. All sessions undergo a peer review process by the ZendCon Content Review team.

There's a few different tracks this year including "The Basics of PHP", "Performance and Scalability", "Zend Framework" and several vendor presentations. You can find out more about the requirements and where to send your presentation on this page on the ZendCon 2008 website. The deadline for submissions is midnight on April 30th, 2008 so you better get busy preparing and sending it in!

The Zend Developer Zone has posted the latest episode in their PHP Abstract podcast series - episode 36, an interview with Zend's CEO Harold Goldberg.

Today it is my privledge to present an interview with Harold Goldberg, the CEO of Zend Technologies. Harold brings more than 20 years experience in senior marketing, strategy and sales roles at top-tier organizations to Zend.

You can still catch the show in one of three ways - direct by mp3, use the in page player or, the popular choice, subscribe to the podcast feed to b notified when the latest episodes come out and have them hand-delivered for your listening pleasure.

As per this announcement on the Zend Developer Zone website, the Zend Framework group has released the latest version of their application framework - Zend Framework 1.5.

Zend Technologies, Inc., the PHP Company, today announced the availability of version 1.5 of Zend Framework, the popular open source PHP framework [...] Additional features in Zend Framework 1.5 include support for several new services and enhancements to already popular features that make building modern web sites easier and faster than ever.

Updates include changes to Zend_Form, Zend_Layout, the LDAP authentication component, an update to the Lucene support, more Ajax functionality and much more. There's also a new service Zend has launched to provide more "official support" for developers/companies using the framework. You can find out more information about the service here.

This new post on the ThinkPHP blog (from Sarah Hermann) talks about some of her first experiences with the popular IDE from Zend, Zend Studio for Eclipse:

The last few days I've started working with Zend Studio for Eclipse. At first view I didn't miss anything which I've used in Zend Studio 5.5 and the IDE looks very good. [...] Overall I think Zend Studio for Eclipse is a great tool to develop PHP applications. With a large amount of plugins, Eclipse provides a platform which gives the possibilty to develop a whole application within one tool, that's a great benefit.

Most of the issues that she came across from the transition were minor things - keystrokes for shortcuts changed, slowness with the breakpoints - nothing that would stop her from dropping it and going back to the regular Zend Studio 5.5.

Matthew Weir O'Phinney has pointd out a webinar from Zend that he will be hosting on the Zend_Form component of the Zend Framework.

I'll be covering the design of Zend_Form, the basic usage and various classes and plugins available, and internationalization of your forms.

You can find out more about the event on its detail page on Zend's site (including an easy link to get you signed up). The webinar will be happening Wednesday March 5th at 9am Pacific Standard.