I’m very happy to say that on Wednesday, December 12, 2012, I’ll be speaking to the BostonPHP group in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The title of my presentation is “How To Be A Web Developer”.

In the speech, I’ll provide a blueprint for how one becomes a Web developer considering the current standards, technologies, and business environment of 2012 and going into 2013. The overarching discussion is on the specific technologies you’ll need to learn and in what order. The role that each technology plays in Web development will be explained, as will some of the issues to watch out for. You’ll also be introduced to some of the applications and other tools that you would be expected to know and use. Towards the end of the presentation, extra time will be given to my favorite PHP framework– Yii–as well as how to get experience and jobs in the Web development field.

For more information, and to indicate your attendance, see this post.

Rob Allen, an active Zend Framework developer and writer, recently explained how to setup PHP and MySQL on the latest version of Mac OS X, 10.8 (aka Mountain Lion). The article does assume some comfort with using the Terminal application (i.e., working with the command line), but goes through everything you need to know, including installing and enabling several common needs. If you’re using Mountain Lion and don’t want to go the MAMP route (I’ve stopped using MAMP and other all-in-one packages myself), this article should be everything you need.

Okay…here it is…the initial table of contents for my Yii book, to be self-published in electronic format (initially, print copies may come later). A couple of notes:

There are two goals for the book. The first is to help readers understand why you do things in certain ways. In other words, I want the reader to fully understand what’s going on behind the scenes so that he or she appreciates the context for whatever bit of code. This big picture approach is what I think is missing among the current documentation. The second goal is to demonstrate common tasks using real-world examples.

The table of contents as presented here is probably about 80% or so reflective of what the final book will be. Some things will change during the writing process. Right now, I’m planing on developing three real-world applications: a Content Management System, an e-commerce site, and a search engine. At least two of these will be used as partial examples throughout the book, too. If there’s an example you’d like to see, please let me know.

I’m tentatively thinking the book will be titled The Yii Book: Developing Web Applications Using the Yii Framework.

Finally, I’ll start selling the book sometime within the next month. I begin formally writing it this week. Once some of the book is available for sale, I’ll provide details as to where you can do that.

Thanks to everyone for their interest in the book and please let me know if you have any questions about or suggestions for the book’s contents.

Nettuts+ has a good article on 8 regular expressions you should know, useful for every Web developer. The article covers four of the most common matches needed—usernames, passwords, email addresses, and URLs, plus four others. For each, the pattern is presented and described, and examples of what will and won’t match each pattern are included. A quick and worthwhile read!

As you may know, I’ll be writing and self-publishing a book on the Yii framework this fall. I’m working on the table of contents now, and will likely post that in a week. You may also know that Qiang Xue, the creator of Yii, has graciously offered to act as the personal tech editor for the book, as has Alex Makarov, author of the popular Yii 1.1 Application Development Cookbook (Packt Publishing). It’s a great honor that both men have offered their time and assistance, and will clearly make for a better book.

With Yii 2 on the horizon, many readers asked if I planned to write the book for version 2 of the framework. And that answer was “yes”. But with Yii 2 not yet out, other readers are now asking if I’m still planning on writing the book for version 2. Well, in communicating with Qiang, there’s been a bit of a change of plans…