There are a number (perhaps too many) of good PHP frameworks.  Symfony is one of them.  I like to study their features to see what I can adopt in my own work.  Partly because the best ideas are worth copying and partly because it is a pity to create conflicting standards where there is already [...]

Semantic markup is a very healthy development.  But it’s giving me some headaches figuring out how best to handle its ramifications for something like a Content Management System (CMS) or any other system that integrates web material from multiple sources.
semantic markup is intended to clarify the meaning of the document
To recap the basic principle, semantic [...]

It isn’t new to have doubts about helpers.  One provocative blog by Nick Malik grabbed attention with the title “Are Helper Classes Evil?“.  That talked about helper classes, defined as classes consisting entirely of static methods.  I wanted to broaden the scope and also give my own reasons for trying to avoid helpers.
Why broaden the [...]

After nearly a year’s work, my book on the building of a Content Management System using PHP was finally published in June 2008. Although when I started working on new code for a CMS, most hosting used PHP 4, it seemed clear that such a substantial development should be done in the more advanced [...]