Once again, we bring you the php|tek Webcast Series. For the past few conferences, we’ve put together a sampling of interesting sessions, hot projects, and sharp people from around the community to talk on topics that have piqued their interest. Since we only have 30 minutes, these usually aren’t in-depth technical discussions.

Instead, consider these appetizers to introduce you to something new, get a flavor for the topic, and entice you to explore more..

February 4th – Josh Butts on Phactory for Unit Testing

Unit Testing with databases is painful at minimum and difficult at best. In this session we’ll talk about Phactory and how to use it to creating objects, generate data, and even testing against MongoDB. Register here »

February 18th – Clark Sell on What is Microsoft WebMatrix?

Did you know WebMatrix could download WordPress, MySQL, PHP, allow you to make some changes and then deploy it right to your ISP? In this webcast, Clark will provide an overview of the newly released WebMatrix. Clark will explain where it fits into the overall Web Deployment story on Windows.
Register here »

March 4th – Nate Abele on the Lithium Framework

Have you heard about this “next generation” of PHP frameworks and wondering what all the hype is about? Are you using PHP 5.3, but still having trouble getting your head around features like closures and where they’re useful?

In addition to giving you an overview of how to build an application with the Lithium framework, and an in-depth look at the flexible filter system and advanced class design, this session will delve into how different patterns and paradigms (including object-oriented, aspect-oriented, functional, and even procedural) come together to make Lithium one of the most flexible, but also one of the most pragmatic PHP frameworks available. Register here »

March 18th – Bill Karwin on SQL Antipatterns: The Next Generation

Following his popular 2010 book “SQL Antipatterns,” Bill Karwin describes all-new blunders developers frequently make when using SQL, and shows how to solve these problems with PHP examples.  Topics include: Crosstab Crossroads, Shell Game, Transaction Encapsulation, and Reading Off the Script. Register here »

April 1st – Aaron Brazell on Pluggable Authorization in WordPress

This session will look at ways to override and “hijack” the authentication process allowing WordPress to leverage existing third party authentication systems such as LDAP or oAuth. It will also examine ways to allow third party applications to leverage WordPress’ authentication system for single sign-on capability across a non-homogenous suite of applications. Register here »

April 15th – Travis Swicegood on Node.js

Node.js allows developers to rapidly build network applications that can handle tens of thousands of users. At least, that’s the promise. This talk introduces developers to Node.js and its ecosystem. It separates the hype from the reality and helps them answer the question “is Node right for me?” Register here »

April 29th – Peter Laudati on Deploying PHP Apps to Windows Azure

In this webcast, we’ll provide an overview of Azure’s services tuned specifically to the needs of a PHP developer. We’ll look at how PHP applications can be deployed to Azure, as well as how Azure’s services can be consumed from PHP apps via the PHP SDK. Want to offload your images & other large media files from your existing shared host? We’ll show how you can you can do this using Azure’s storage service. We’ll also look at SQL Azure, the relational database service provided by Azure, and show how you can migrate your MySQL data to it. Register here »

May 13th – Matthew Weier O’Phinney on Git Over it

With the explosion of distributed version control systems (DVCS) in the past decade, a few have risen to the top in terms of adoption, including Mercurial, Bazaar, and Git. In this webinar, we’ll look at the basics of Git, and some common workflows you’ll encounter when using Git in the real world: collaborating with others. Register here »

Starting on February 4th, 2011 and all the way until php|tek, we’ll get together every other Friday at 2pm Eastern (GMT-5). Grab your lunch, bring a cup of coffee, or just turn off your phone and come learn with us.

And if your boss needs convincing, describe it as community-driven Research & Development that didn’t come out of your budget. 😉