Stuart Herbert On PHP

London and the North West of the UK have their own successful PHP user groups … and it’s time we had one here in the South West :)

I’ve setup a PHP SW group on Google to get us started, and we’re already talking about where (probably the centre of Bristol) and when to have our first meet-up. Why not join the group and the discussion?

I’m hoping to appeal to folks using PHP who live or work in the Bristol, Bath, South Wales and South West of England regions to come along and join in. There must be plenty of us in the area!

October in Manchester is home to the PHPNW09 conference. Last year’s conference was a great event, and this year’s promises to be even better. And I’m not just saying that because I’m a conference sponsor this year, honest :)

Immediately before the conference, I’m running a two day tutorial in the fundamentals of setting up and running a team of PHP developers, covering:

• Keep your promises to your customers using written specifications
• Organise your team using Subversion and Trac
• Control quality using code reviews
• Deliver to your customers using release management and follow-up support arrangements
• Where to go after the course for additional learning

Places are limited to just 25 people, and there is an early-bird discount for anyone who signs up before 21st September. You can find out more on the course website, and sign-up online.

It’s been a busy few months since I had to drop out of the Dutch PHP Conference’s PHP-on-Windows competition due to work pressures. At work, we’ve finished rebranding, launched a new corporate website, and are now starting on a review-and-polish cycle. We’ve also been kept busy finishing off the next version of our VoIP platform, migrating all of our customers onto it (just two more weeks to go!) and coping with a growth rate of 26% during the worst recession in living memory.

Outside work, my wife and I were involved in a car crash at the end of July. We’re both recovering well, although my wife won’t be back at work until at least mid-September. This has meant we’ve had to take things very easy for the summer, but I’m hoping to be back online and blogging regularly again shortly.

Came across a second Microsoft-sponsored competition aimed at showcasing PHP on Windows. This one is for Canadian residents, and is headlined ‘The Ultimate Coder Battle‘. The premise is quite interesting: one student and one professional developer will be the chosen finalists, and they will battle head to head at the “Make Web Not War” conference. The winner walks away with substantial cash prizes – $5000 with another $5000 in bonus awards available. Entries close 3rd June.

After many many years of pushing ASP and ASP.net, I’m finding it fascinating to watch Microsoft push Windows as a viable platform for publishing PHP applications. Although PHP apps on Windows have been viable for many years (provided you ditched the fundamentally-flawed ISAPI approach and stuck with the slower-but-stable CGI route), I think it’s great to see the improvements that are being made both to PHP and IIS. From personal experience, I know it can be very difficult to sell PHP-based apps into organisations that choose Windows; being able to point at Microsoft’s support for PHP is a good thing for the ISV community.

I’m currently looking for two PHP developers to come and join my web development team at Gradwell. The team creates and maintains the web-based control panels for our award-winning VoIP service, plus our broadband, email, and web hosting services. From time to time we also get to do crazy things like Twittex and Facebook applications. Our partners often describe us as the geekiest company they ever have to deal with. And one nice bonus is that we use Linux for our desktops not Windows :)

The full details are on the Gradwell website, but the basics are that I’m looking for people with a computer science / software engineering degree, with PHP experience (via open-source projects is fine; it doesn’t have to be commercial experience), and experience with symfony is a major plus. It’s essential that you fit in with everyone else in the company, so you’ll need to be someone who’s proactive but supportive rather than competitive.

If you’re interested in applying, talk to me on Twitter or send through a CV and covering letter explaining why you’re the person for the role to stuart(dot)herbert at gradwell(dot)com.