Let’s take a trip back to the year 2000, to remember where we’ve come from. A time when we had all just gotten over the panic of the Y2K bug. PHP 4 was newly released with its object model support and Zend Engine. All of the current PHP frameworks that we know now were at least five years away from being written. Flash-based websites were state of the art – and I introduced PHP to the Hubble Space Telescope program. –by Eli White

I’ve been programming for 12 years in multiple languages, but PHP remains dear to my heart despite its ugliness, inconsistencies and “punching bag” status among the idealistic in the programming community. Along the way, I’ve picked up many little tricks and bits of knowledge, ones that come from experience and mistakes I’ve made. These tips and tricks fall into three major categories: ones that are simply best practices when programming in PHP, ones that are useful for performance and memory considerations when running PHP, and ones that are related to specific functionality in PHP. Some of these hints will be no surprise, and perhaps you’re already using them in all your code, but hopefully you can take away at least one useful tip that saves you time and debugging. –by Elizabeth Smith

The London Research Institute is the largest research institute funded by Cancer Research UK and conducts innovative, basic, biological research to improve our understanding of cancer. It is not only known as a leading center of research excellence, but is an avid PHP user. –by Kim Rowan

Namespaces are a feature that was implemented in PHP 5.3.0. Though this feature has been released for over three years, there are developers out there that still have questions about what namespaces are, how they are used, and most importantly, when they should be used. This article takes an in-depth look at namespaces in an effort to provide insight into both the mechanics of using namespaces and some ideas to consider when deciding whether to implement them in a new project or refactor for namespaces in an existing project. –by Andrew Podner

It all started with an idea back in October 2002. Marco and I both liked PHP. What was available online were simple tutorials that didn’t go beyond the basics. Let’s face it, there’s only so many ways to connect to a MySQL database and run a query. We wanted to provide high caliber content, on a medium that was easily accessible by everybody. There were no PHP magazines on the market at the time, and we saw an opportunity to fill that void. –by Arbi Arzoumani

When designing and building high performance web applications, how often do we consider the application as a whole? This article will look at what these parts are and what they mean for your app’s performance. –by Matthew Setter

Some of you will remember that I used to write on a monthly basis about fixing bugs for Zend Framework. Fewer of you will remember that I took a summer break and promised to be back, writing about fixing bugs in ZF 2. It is probably safe to assume that no one thinks ZF 2 is so good that it doesn’t have any bugs, so after a somewhat extended summer break: here I am: On to the fixing! –by Bart McLeod

It’s been a long road, but the reins are being passed. Don’t miss Marco’s last exit column. –by Marco Tabini

It’s that time of year again…I discuss community, how to fulfill your New Year’s resolution moments after making it, and why it’s in your best interest to send me some feedback. –by Elizabeth Tucker Long