Atlanta PHP User Group

We will be taking a break in July for the July 4th holiday. We hope you’ll join us again on August 6th for our regularly scheduled meeting.

When: Thursday, June 4, 2009—7pm-9pm
Where: Consulate General of Canada

Presentation: Zend Technologies’ Offerings to the PHP Open Source Community (Edward Kietlinski)

Please join Zend Technologies (The PHP Company) at the June meeting of Atlanta PHP User Group. Edward Kietlinksi, Zend Solutions Consultant will explore the complete Zend software stack and how to optimize your efforts with PHP applications. Open source example applications like Magento eCommerce, osCommerce, Joomla, SugarCRM, Drupal, will be used to showcase how to tackle common and complex problems. Both the open source Zend stack and the advanced Professional Edition solutions will be shown to address poor performance, troubleshooting problems, identifying bottlenecks, slow databases, integrating PHP into Java, and improving MVC Zend Framework apps. Edward will also show Zend Server CE/PE, PDT/Studio, and Zend Framework. There will also be a Zend Raffle at the meeting.

Location

Our meeting takes place at the Consulate General of Canada at 100 Colony Square in Midtown Atlanta (at the corner of Peachtree and 14th Streets). Click here for directions. You will need to see the concierge in order to gain access to the 17th floor.

When: Thursday, May 7, 2009—7pm-9pm
Where: Consulate General of Canada

Presentation: Overview of IE8 and the Web Platform Installer

In this session, Developer Evangelist Glen Gordon will cover two recent releases from Microsoft that are of interest to PHP developers. First, we’ll look at the new Microsoft Web Platform Installer. The Platform Installer simplifies and streamlines the process of configuring IIS, installing PHP and setting up community applications like WordPress and Drupal. In this session, you’ll see the Platform Installer in action, explore the Web App Gallery, and learn how to get your own apps included in the gallery. Next, we’ll take a look at the recently released Internet Explorer 8. We’ll see how both developers and users benefit from improved standards-based rendering, and how developers can ensure that their sites will render properly for users using IE8. We’ll also cover how to take advantage of IE8’s new end user productivity features like Accelerators, Web Slices and search providers.

Glen will be bringing some trial software and giveaways to the meeting, so come get some goodies!

Glen is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft. His job is to ensure developers have the tools, information and resources they need to be successful implementing solutions that involve Microsoft technologies. You can reach Glen through his blog at http://glengordon.name/.

Location

Our meeting takes place at the Consulate General of Canada at 100 Colony Square in Midtown Atlanta (at the corner of Peachtree and 14th Streets). Click here for directions. You will need to see the concierge in order to gain access to the 17th floor.

When: Thursday, April 2, 2009—7pm-9pm
Where: Consulate General of Canada

Presentation: IBM’s Offerings to the Open Source Community (Matt Stobo)

With the pendulum continually swinging between computing on the client and computing on the server companies like IBM must stay innovative to remain competitive and develop innovative solutions to help their clients innovate in order to compete. People think of Big Blue as mainframes, proprietary software, and robust, but heavy application servers. With the pendulum now in the space of fatter clients and lighter servers what does IBM have to offer in this seemingly unfamiliar territory where open source, WEB 2.0, and LAMP reign. In this presentation we will discuss some of IBM’s offerings in this space and how they can be used to help you compete.

Matt Stobo is a Senior IT Specialist with IBM, where he focuses primarily on the WebSphere brand of products. He works with and advises many fortune 100 companies on their WebSphere environments. He has presented at the WebSphere Technical Exchange and has published articles on IBM’s Developerworks.

Location

Our meeting takes place at the Consulate General of Canada at 100 Colony Square in Midtown Atlanta (at the corner of Peachtree and 14th Streets). Click here for directions. You will need to see the concierge in order to gain access to the 17th floor.

When: Thursday, March 5, 2009—7pm-9pm
Where: Consulate General of Canada

Presentation: Rapid Application Development with ModelBaker

Jonathan Freeman, creator of ModelBaker will present how to build a web application in a few minutes with ModelBaker, a rapid application development tool designed around the novice and agile PHP developer. Without any programming, we will create a web application from scratch that will automatically generate a complete MVC framework along with a newly created database, relationships, models, controllers, views, css and javascript. We will then enable an iPhone & iPod touch version of our web application for our mobile users.

Location

Our meeting takes place at the Consulate General of Canada at 100 Colony Square in Midtown Atlanta (at the corner of Peachtree and 14th Streets). Click here for directions. You will need to see the concierge in order to gain access to the 17th floor.

When: Thursday, February 5, 2009—7pm-9pm
Where: Consulate General of Canada

Presentation: PHP & Apache: Why httpd.conf Is Your New BFF!

Apache’s configuration files can be used to configure how Apache operates, but they can also be used to configure PHP and how Apache httpd interacts with PHP. In this talk, Jeff Jones explains the different ways Apache can be configured, explains many of the useful config options available for Apache modules, including our own mod_php, and showcases example of how they can be used with, and instead of, your PHP code.

Mini-topic: Design Patterns: The Registry Pattern

Each month, we’ll take a look at a different design pattern, exploring why you might want to use it, and showing how to implement it in PHP.

This month, we’ll explore the Registry Pattern with Ben Ramsey.

Location

Our meeting takes place at the Consulate General of Canada at 100 Colony Square in Midtown Atlanta (at the corner of Peachtree and 14th Streets). Click here for directions. You will need to see the concierge in order to gain access to the 17th floor.

When: Thursday, January 8, 2009—7pm-9pm
Where: Consulate General of Canada

Presentation: Around the PHP Community

For new and veteran PHP programmers alike, it’s often difficult to find the right place to ask questions and find the best answers and solutions to programming challenges. This month, Ben Ramsey takes us on a journey through the PHP Community to discover the websites the experts use to get PHP news and information and the places they go to ask for help (because even experts need help). He’ll wrap up the talk with a brief who’s who in the PHP Community, introducing you to some of the core developers and familiar faces around the community.

Mini-topic: Design Patterns: The Factory Pattern

Each month, we’ll take a look at a different design pattern, exploring why you might want to use it, and showing how to implement it in PHP.

This month, we’ll explore the Factory Pattern with Brian DeShong.

Location

Our meeting takes place at the Consulate General of Canada at 100 Colony Square in Midtown Atlanta (at the corner of Peachtree and 14th Streets). Click here for directions. You will need to see the concierge in order to gain access to the 17th floor.

When: Thursday, December 4, 2008—7pm-9pm
Where: Consulate General of Canada

Presentation: Setting Up Online Training with Moodle

Kevin Roberts will present how to set up an online training system using Moodle—an open source PHP application that provides pretty much everything you need for a self-serve training environment. Moodle has a huge and vibrant development community. We will also install a community-provided module that takes the grief out of scheduling one-on-one remote training sessions.

From the Moodle web site: Moodle is a course management system (CMS)—a free, Open Source software package designed using sound pedagogical principles, to help educators create effective online learning communities. You can download and use it on any computer you have handy (including webhosts), yet it can scale from a single-teacher site to a University with 200,000 students.

Mini-topic: Design Patterns: The Singleton Pattern

Ben Ramsey revives our monthly mini-topic presentation by introducing a new series on design patterns. Each month, we’ll take a look at a different design pattern, exploring why you might want to use it, and showing how to implement it in PHP.

This month, we’ll take a look at the Singleton Pattern.

Location

Our meeting takes place at the Consulate General of Canada at 100 Colony Square in Midtown Atlanta (at the corner of Peachtree and 14th Streets). Click here for directions. You will need to see the concierge in order to gain access to the 17th floor.

When: Thursday, November 6, 2008—7pm-9pm
Where: Consulate General of Canada

November Topic: Got a problem? We’ve got answers!

Got a bug that’s been nagging you for hours? How about a feature that you just can’t seem to implement? This month at Atlanta PHP, we’re diverging from our usual presentation format and opening the floor for a “round table” discussion about development problems you are facing.

So, feel free to bring your coding problems to us, and as a group, we’ll come up with the solutions. Bring your laptop or a thumb drive containing snippets/samples of your code or application, so we can look at it as a group. This is sure to be a learning experience for us all.

Our meeting takes place at the Consulate General of Canada at 100 Colony Square in Midtown Atlanta (at the corner of Peachtree and 14th Streets). Click here for directions. You will need to see the concierge in order to gain access to the 17th floor.

PHP Basics at the Atlanta Web Design Group Meetup on November 11

On November 11 at 7:00pm, Matthew Turland will speak to the Atlanta Web Design Group about PHP, covering basics of the language and best practices from a designer’s perspective. This will include basic output, variables, conditional branches, loops, output modularization using includes, coding style, and escaping output for security purposes.

Matthew is the Lead Programmer for a Web application service provider, is Zend PHP Certified, and works with PHP and MySQL on a daily basis. He’s also a member of the PHP Community organization and serves as an organizer for the Acadiana Open Source Group. You can also read his blog at http://ishouldbecoding.com/.

There will be a 30-40 minute presentation followed by Q&A and discussion.

You must RSVP at Meetup.com for this meeting.

php|works and PyWorks in Atlanta November 12-14!

Atlanta PHP invites you to join us at php|works and PyWorks in Atlanta, GA November 12 through 14!

Atlanta PHP user group members receive $100 off the price of registration!

The publishers of php|architect and Python Magazine, are proud to invite you to php|works and PyWorks, two great conferences that will take place in Atlanta, GA, USA, between November 12 and November 14.

With over 65 talks in 5 tracks, 10 tutorials and great networking events and parties, php|works and PyWorks represent a unique opportunity to not only hone your technical skills, but also meet and interact with members of a vibrant community of developers from all walks of life. And remember—your attendance fee covers access to both conferences!

Due to the gas shortage in Atlanta, Atlanta PHP has decided to cancel its regularly scheduled October meeting. We apologize for the short notice, but we felt this was the right decision to make given the current situation.

We will resume our regularly scheduled meetings on Thursday, November 6th. We hope to see you there!

Now, for a few announcements:

BarCamp is returning to Atlanta this year. BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from participants. BarCamp Atlanta will take place on October 17-18, 2008 in Atlanta, GA at the Georgia Tech ATDC in Midtown. There is only space for 300 participants, so be sure to sign up early!

Atlanta PHP invites you to join us at php|works and PyWorks in Atlanta, GA November 12 through 14!

Atlanta PHP user group members receive $100 off the price of registration!

The publishers of php|architect and Python Magazine, are proud to invite you to php|works and PyWorks, two great conferences that will take place in Atlanta, GA, USA, between November 12 and November 14.

With over 65 talks in 5 tracks, 10 tutorials and great networking events and parties, php|works and PyWorks represent a unique opportunity to not only hone your technical skills, but also meet and interact with members of a vibrant community of developers from all walks of life. And remember—your attendance fee covers access to both conferences!