A very warm welcome to you out there in the PHP community, and thank you for joining us :)
We start this week with several releases from the PHP development team; PHP 7.4.2, 7.3.14 and 7.2.27 are all available immediately.
Laravel 6.12.0 has also been announced, as well as several releases from the Symfony team.
We have an analysis of PHP in 2020, reminding us what a great language it is to learn and how much it has improved from ten years ago.
Plus an interview with loyal WordPress user and self taught web designer Robert Cheleuka, who grew up in Malawi.
And finally, the dev/hell podcast returns with friend-of-the-podcast Paul Reinheimer.
Have a great weekend,
Cheers
Katie and Ade |
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Articles
Why Laravel Is a Good Fit for Enterprise Software
So what makes Laravel an ideal PHP framework for enterprise software development. In short, a lot, but we’ll break it down into five distinctive points. These are the core reasons we, as an enterprise software company, rebuilt our product using the Laravel framework and its prepackaged VueJS library/framework.
PHP In 2020
In this post, I want to look at this bright side of PHP development. I want to show you that, despite its many shortcomings, PHP is a worthwhile language to learn. I want you to know that the PHP 5 era is coming to an end. That, if you want to, you can write modern and clean PHP code, and leave behind much of the mess it was 10 years ago.
Google PageSpeed Insights: The Truth About Scoring 100/100
Google PageSpeed Insights is without a doubt a useful tool for webmasters, developers and site owners of all types. However, we’ve noticed that a lot of people spend hours obsessing over optimising their sites, in order to try and score 100/100 on this test. This post is a comprehensive guide to using Google PageSpeed Insights to your best advantage.
MailPoet and WordPress Newsletter Plugins vs Mailchimp and Drip
There are a lot of options when it comes to sending out email newsletters for your WordPress site. You can choose from dozens of plugins or dedicated services like Mailchimp or Drip. With all these options, it’s hard to separate the signal from the noise and make a solid decision on how to move forward. In this week’s post, we’ll take a look at some of these options and see if there’s a clear and dry answer on when to use a plugin or a dedicated service.
Over 2000 WordPress Sites Hit by Malicious Redirects
Thousands of WordPress sites have been infected with malicious JavaScript in an attempt to promote scam websites, according to Sucuri. |
Tutorials and Talks
Building an Order Tracking System in Laravel Powered by Twilio SMS
In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Twilio’s Programmable SMS to create an order tracking system using Laravel and update users about their package(s) via SMS.
Authentication and Laravel Airlock
HTTP requests are stateless. To authenticate a user, you need to explicitly mention who the user is on every request. This can be done by sending a token that has information about the user, or sending a session ID that the server can use to find the user.
Disabling HTML5 Form Validation for Laravel Dusk Tests
If you’re testing form validation using Laravel Dusk, you’ve probably hit a scenario where the form submission is blocked by Chrome before it’s sent to the server because of HTML5 form validation.
How to Clear the WordPress Cache
In this article, I’ll show you how to quickly and easily clear the cache for all the major web browsers and all of the major WordPress caching plugins, including WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache. Regardless of whether the issue is browser-based or server-based, by the end of this article you’ll be seeing the most up-to-date version of your WordPress website.
Creating Collections With The Lightroom Classic SDK
I currently organise my photo library in Lightroom Classic with one folder per day for my images and then I extensively use collection sets, collections and smart collections to manage the photos that represent an “event”, regardless of whether the project is a single day, such as a family BBQ, a multi-day event such as a conference or a multi-month thing such as my Project 365 or mainline railway photos. The nice thing about using collections is that I can have the same photo in multiple logical folders while only having a single copy of the file on disk.
Provisioned Concurrency - The End of Cold Starts
AWS today announced Provisioned Concurrency, an exciting feature to allow Lambda customers to not have to worry about cold starts anymore. In this post, we’ll drill into the problems cold starts pose, explore how Provisioned Concurrency resolves them, and explain some rough edges you need to understand when it comes to working with this new feature.
Park Ticketing Management System Using PHP and MySQL
Park ticketing management system project.
Developing Blocker-Friendly Websites
The modern internet has become obsessed with tracking, analytics, and targeted advertising. Almost all of your browsing activity is tracked: sometimes by your network provider, and frequently by the hosts of the websites you visit (and anyone they choose to share data with). If you host a website—and many of us do—chances are good you're running analytics software on it, collecting metadata about your users' devices and browsing activity.
My PhpStorm Settings After 8 Years Of Use
It's been a long time. I've been using PhpStorm for almost 8 years now. More precisely from 2012. Version 3 back then. A lot has happened in that time. A lot has changed. Of course, you learn more and more every day. This article is the result of my 8 years of experience with PhpStorm and my best settings that make you a faster developer and let you focus more on the important things.
Rules For Working With Dynamic Arrays And Custom Collection Classes
Here are some rules I use for working with dynamic arrays. It's pretty much a Style Guide for Array Design, but it didn't feel right to add it to the Object Design Style Guide, because not every object-oriented language has dynamic arrays. The examples in this post are written in PHP, because PHP is pretty much Java (which might be familiar), but with dynamic arrays instead of built-in collection classes and interfaces.
How to Integrate Google reCAPTCHA with PHP
Spamming is a very common issue for all websites. Every web developer faces to the spamming problem and implements captcha verification. Google Recaptcha is one of the best options to get free from spam. In this tutorial, we are going to see how to use Recaptcha in PHP or How to use Google reCaptcha code in PHP. |
News and Announcements
PHP 7.3.14 Released
The PHP development team announces the immediate availability of PHP 7.3.14. This is a security release which also contains several bug fixes. All PHP 7.3 users are encouraged to upgrade to this version.
PHP 7.2.27 Released
The PHP development team announces the immediate availability of PHP 7.2.27. This is a security release. All PHP 7.2 users are encouraged to upgrade to this version.
PHP 7.4.2 Release Announcement
The PHP development team announces the immediate availability of PHP 7.4.2. This is a security release which also contains several bug fixes. All PHP 7.4 users are encouraged to upgrade to this version.
Laravel 6.12.0 Released
The Laravel team released v6.12.0 this week with the ability to load factories from a package, dump test session data, and many other features! This release is jam-packed with contributions that add some sweet syntactic sugar for repetitive things like filtering a request input as a Boolean.
Symfony 5.0.3 Released
Symfony 5.0.3 has just been released with a list of the most important changes.
Symfony 4.4.3 Released
Symfony 4.4.3 has just been released with a list of the most important changes.
Symfony 4.3.10 Released
Symfony 4.3.10 has just been released with a list of the most important changes.
Symfony 3.4.37 Released
Symfony 3.4.37 has just been released with a list of the most important changes.
SymfonyLive Warszawa June 9-12th 2020, Poland
Come for the conference to learn all about the latest developments with Symfony, share best practices, experience, knowledge and make new contacts with the great Symfony community from Poland! All talks will be in Polish, except for the Keynotes, which will be in English. Early Bird Tickets are on sale now and the Call for Papers is open.
Dutch PHP Conference - June 25-27th 2020, Amsterdam
Join us for 3 full days of Insights, Inspiration " Community around PHP and Web Technology! Learn new stuff and get inspired by 50+ speakers and 500+ fellow attendees: join our Tutorial Day Thursday June 25 with master classes from the PHP Web Tech community followed by the main Conference Days Friday and Saturday June 26 and 27, two days full of talks and social activities. Tickets are on sale now.
ScotlandPHP Conference - 13-14th November 2020, Edinburgh
Join the worldwide PHP community for the fifth ScotlandPHP conference later this year. There will be 13 talks presented across 2 tracks, along with 3 workshops, to help you enhance your current skills and find out what's next for PHP and beyond. Blind Bird Tickets are on sale now and the Call for Papers is open until May. |
Podcasts and Vlogs
dev/hell Podcast Episode 99: Can I Keep Flexing (Extended Mix)
Ed: “Who do you think was our best guest over the years?” Chris (without hesitating): “Paul Reinheimer”. Friend-of-the-podcast Paul Reinheimer has known Ed and Chris for many years and has shared many wonderful stories about himself and his side-gig-turned-primary-gig WonderNetwork both in person and on previous episodes. Who else could tell us about their experiences of dealing with apathetic corporations who are hosting hardware for them in locations around there world? We jumped all over the place so dig into the show notes for some interesting content.
Laravel News Podcast LN110 - Airlocks, Bears and Calendars
In this episode, Jake and Michael discuss Airlocks, Bears, Calendars, and all the latest Laravel releases, tutorials, and happenings in the community.
The Laracasts Snippets Episode 118 - They're Only Guidelines
I think you'll find that intermediate-level developers tend to be the most passionate and rigid of the entire community. It is at this stage of your learning when you are most susceptible and attracted to programming "rules," or instructions from above that, when followed, lead us to clean code. But that's okay. While we all eventually realise that rules are meant to be broken, in certain phases of our training, rules very much serve an important purpose, and we'll talk about it in this episode.
North Meets South Web Podcast Episode 68: Privacy Focus, Email Woes and Too Much Logging
Jake and Michael return to discuss focusing on privacy, sending LOTS of email quickly, and how much logging is too much logging.
Post Status Draft Podcast - Introducing a New Chapter, with Cory Miller as Post Status Partner
Cory Miller is now a co-owner and Partner of Post Status. He’s purchased half of the business and will help run and grow it moving forward. |
People of WordPress: Robert Cheleuka
WordPress enthusiasts share many examples of how WordPress changed people’s lives for the better. This monthly series shares some of those lesser-known, amazing stories.
A Week of Symfony #682 (20-26 January 2020)
This week, Symfony published the 3.4.37, 4.3.10, 4.4.3 and 5.0.3 maintenance versions. Meanwhile, SymfonyLive Lille 2020 conference published its full schedule.
Designing for WordPress
In this course, you’ll learn the basics of WordPress theme design, but with a twist. We’ll approach the process from a “design system” perspective. Instead of designing the theme page by page and button by button, we’ll start by defining a few key parameters: colours, typography, spacing and sizing. Based on these, we’ll design basic and advanced patterns and document them along the way.
Add PHP To Your Web-Building Toolkit With This 4-course Training Bundle
There’s never been a better time to work as a web developer—regardless of whether you’re looking to work with a big company or as a solo freelancer. The Essential PHP Coding Bundle will get you up to speed with one of the world’s most popular and powerful web development scripting languages, and it’s currently available for over 90% off its retail price. |
Jobs
Web Full Stack Engineer
Short Description: Join our passionate team of top-notch engineers to solve a real-world problem, and help people spend less time managing expenses and more time pursuing their real goals. Whether you’re building features like calendar integrations, importing credit card transactions, or pulling information from receipts, you’re self-driven and collaborative. You’re an autonomous individual who is passionate about writing beautiful and concise code. You’re willing to work with other engineers, designers and customer facing teams to turn our dreams into reality.
Do you have a position that you would like to fill? PHP Weekly is ideal for targeting developers and the cost is only $50/week for an advert. Please let me know if you are interested by emailing me at [email protected] |
Interesting Projects, Tools and Libraries
pastefy
Pastefy is an Open Source self-hosted Pastebin/GithubGist alternative.
textpattern
A flexible, elegant, fast and easy-to-use content management system written in PHP.
pelagos
Pelagos is a system for maintaining a repository of scientific research data.
acf-extended
All-in-one enhancement suite that improves WordPress & Advanced Custom Fields. This plugin aims to provide a powerful administration framework with a wide range of improvements & optimisations.
ubilling
Ubilling is opensource ISP billing system based on stargazer.
tomasvotruba.com
Blog about hacking PHP, education and being the laziest PHP programmer in the world.
types
Types wrap your data in value objects that are guaranteed to be valid and normalised; or not to exist at all. It allows you to use specific type hints instead of primitive types or arrays. Your code will be unbreakable and your IDE will love it.
psalm
Psalm is a static analysis tool for finding errors in PHP applications, built on top of PHP Parser.
spider
Spider is a PHP library with easily module integration for crawling website that allows you to scrape informations.
feed-io
A PHP library to read and write feeds in JSONFeed, RSS or Atom format.
adodb
ADOdb is a PHP database class library that provides powerful abstractions for performing queries and managing databases. ADOdb also hides the differences between DB engines so you can easily switch them without changing your code.
elkarte
ElkArte Forum. A free, open source, PHP-based discussion forum. |
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