‘Tis the Season

Here is my latest editorial for the December 2013 issue of php[architect] magazine:

‘Tis the Season

This season is a good time to pause and be grateful for the gifts all around us. Not the new things that may be coming, but the things that are already here. The PHP community has a wonderful wealth of blogs, tools, extensions, libraries, and open source projects to be grateful for. So do me a favor, take a moment and share a note about your favorite project or tool either on our Facebook page or by tagging us on Twitter (@phparch). We would love to learn about and help promote more of the awesome projects created and used by our community.

On that note, let’s discuss a few of the gifts that we have this season. Git has been a big hit with our community, but it can be tough to use when multiple developers need to work on a remote server that mimics the production server. Thankfully, John and his team have worked through this issue and are sharing their knowledge with us. Looking to get more out of Git? Matt is graciously sharing his favorite Git Extras with us in this month’s Education Station. Want to work more on the server, but intimidated by the command line? Walk through a set of amazing Unix tools with Michael and become more comfortable working without a GUI.

Sometimes, a little help is the greatest gift we can receive. Need a little help drawing images? Ross will show you how Raphael can help you create images in no time. Have a lot of data that you need to make searchable? Benjamin can show you how to harness the power of Cloudant’s BigCouch to get that data under control. Want to make sure you get what you expect out of your code? Aaron shows you how to format your arrays for better accuracy. Feeling frustrated trying to keep everything organized? Wish there were an easy way to find tools? Chris has started an awesome new project called PHP Toolbox. Based on the idea behind The Ruby Toolbox, this is a place where you can not only find new tools, but you can also read (and write) reviews of various tools. The project is just starting out and needs your help to make sure it lists all the best tools out there, so be sure to stop by and make some suggestions.

Eli wraps things up, reminiscing about the closing of the first year of the Musketeers at php[architect]. We’ve really enjoyed this year, and we hope you have to. And as you start to think about what you want to accomplish in the upcoming year and if you are into that sort of thing, your New Year’s resolutions, might we suggest sending feedback to your favorite magazine editors and authors? We would love to hear what you think of each issue. Happy Everything! See you in 2014!