Drupal is a popular content management platform powering millions of websites. Last spring, I overheard someone say that Microsoft was beginning to “embrace Drupal.” Frankly, I was skeptical. Drupal has been tremendously successful as an open source, platform-independent PHP project; so, there is no discrete version of Drupal for Windows. Questions regarding Drupal’s compatibility with Windows are fundamentally rooted in the viability and reach of Microsoft’s embrace of open source, PHP development. –by Bryan Lewellen

In the December 2009 issue of php|architect, I did an article on PHP and Windows Azure. While providing complete PHP support, Microsoft’s cloud platform and related tooling has since evolved into a great combination. Whereas in 2009, you still needed a Windows box for PHP on Windows Azure development, the development platform no longer matters. Of course, since Windows Azure is in fact Windows under the hood, development on a Windows box provides an identical environment to that of the production code. However, if you are familiar with Linux or Mac, it’s no pain to start building applications for Windows Azure. I’ll show you how to get started over the next few pages. –by Maarten Balliauw

No matter what language you use, developing code is the same – spec, code, deploy, maintain. The “Big Boys” have teams to manage each task, but what happens when you don’t? I’ll go over some different methods for maintaining internal and external programs that are cheap, open source, and make your life easier. PHP has a plethora of tools for us to use to effectively code and maintain our projects; and the best part is that they are generally inexpensive or even free. The trick is finding and using these tools effectively in a workflow that the developer can use. –by Chris Tankersley

Post Cisco-acquisition, WebEx has had the opportunity to take advantage of the massive network of Cisco partners, to aid in the sale of WebEx services. Our free trials platform, however, was dated and not up to the challenge of scaling. With a huge opportunity ahead of us, we had to do something different, even to go so far as to start over with our trials platform. This article is an overview of that process, showing how we were able to achieve greater success by leveraging Zend and VMWare solutions. I’ll show you how virtualization, job queuing, session clustering and more have made major improvements to our user experience and scalability. –by Phillip Shipley

There are tons of companies hiring. How do you get them to notice you? –by Cal Evans

Your local community can be a great resource for introductions to new technologies or help with ones you already use. –by Michelangelo van Dam

PHP’s ”strip_tags()” makes it easy to follow the first rule of internet security: “filter input, escape output.” –by John M. Stokes

Instead of attacking people asking for help, why don’t we all just band together and attack the problem? –by Marco Tabini

Work that network, get help, get involved. –by Elizabeth Tucker Long