Atlanta PHP

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!

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!

Free training when you sign up!

Sign up for any conference + tutorial day package before September 27 and receive complimentary access to one of our training classes free of charge—a $900 value yours completely free!

For more information, visit our Specials Page

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!

Here’s a brief, partial selection of some of the great talks that will be presented at php|works and PyWorks:

• Matthew Weier O’Phinney: Rich UIs with Zend Framework and Dojo
• Sebastian Bergmann: Lambdas, closures and traits in PHP
• Sara Golemon: Simple scaling every developer should know
• Travis Swicegood: Introduction to Git
• Mark Ramm: Building Web Applications with TurboGears
• Michael Foord: IronPython: Python on .NET
• Morgan Tocker: Performance Tuning MySQL
• Chris Shiflett: Security-Centered Design

• D. Keith Casey, Jr.: Mobilizing the Web

  You can find the complete schedule for both conferences here.

  With attendance fees starting as low as $499 per person, special hotel deals and a location that is just minutes by one of the most accessible international airports in the world, php|works and PyWorks are your chance to be part of a unique learning experience!

  Sign up today—don’t miss out!

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

Presentation: Rickroll To Go With PHP, WURFL, and Other Open Source Tools

Want to get that wallpaper on your iPhone or that Rick Astley video on your Nokia N95? In a world where mobile content is becoming more prevalent by the day, how can we enhance the experience of gathering images, audio and video for consumption on mobile devices?

Brian will demonstrate how you can leverage the Wireless Universal Resource File (WURFL), PHP, ImageMagick, ffmpeg, and other open source tools to optimize content for consumption on mobile devices.

Our own Brian DeShong to present.

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.

IMPORTANT – We will NOT be meeting on August 7th. Our next meeting has been rescheduled to August 14th to accommodate our special speaker, Jay Pipes from MySQL.

When: Thursday, August 14, 2008—7pm-9pm
Where: Consulate General of Canada

Presentation: Join-Fu: The Art of SQL

Jay Pipes, the North American Community Relations Manager at MySQL and co-author of Pro MySQL (Apress, 2005), joins us this month to present “Join-Fu: The Art of SQL.”

Join-fu is the art of performance-tuning your application’s SQL. Join Jay in a fun, irreverent look at the common ways application developers misuse and abuse their database.

Topics covered include:

• Schema optimization and vertical partitioning
• SQL Coding style guidelines
• Set-wise problem solving in SQL (and why it kicks for-loop-fu’s ass.)
  • Rewriting correlated subqueries into joins
  • Using derived tables or subqueries in the FROM clause
• Working with N:M or “mapping” tables
  • Dealing with OR conditions
  • Dealing with AND conditions
  • Combatting filesorts using Cross-join-fu
• Understanding Left-join-fu
• Handling Heirarchical Data
  • Adjacency Lists
  • Nested Sets
• Doing GIS calculations in SQL
  • Without using user variables, the spatial extensions or stored functions
  • Calculating distance between two points
  • Doing radius searches in spherical geometries
• Reporting techniques in SQL
  • Calculating running sums and aggregates
  • Calculating rank of results

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.

UPDATE: The date of this meeting has been changed to Thursday, August 14th.

When: Thursday, August 14, 2008—7pm-9pm
Where: Consulate General of Canada

Presentation: Join-Fu: The Art of SQL

Jay Pipes, the North American Community Relations Manager at MySQL and co-author of Pro MySQL (Apress, 2005), joins us this month to present “Join-Fu: The Art of SQL.”

Join-fu is the art of performance-tuning your application’s SQL. Join Jay in a fun, irreverent look at the common ways application developers misuse and abuse their database.

Topics covered include:

• Schema optimization and vertical partitioning
• SQL Coding style guidelines
• Set-wise problem solving in SQL (and why it kicks for-loop-fu’s ass.)
  • Rewriting correlated subqueries into joins
  • Using derived tables or subqueries in the FROM clause
• Working with N:M or “mapping” tables
  • Dealing with OR conditions
  • Dealing with AND conditions
  • Combatting filesorts using Cross-join-fu
• Understanding Left-join-fu
• Handling Heirarchical Data
  • Adjacency Lists
  • Nested Sets
• Doing GIS calculations in SQL
  • Without using user variables, the spatial extensions or stored functions
  • Calculating distance between two points
  • Doing radius searches in spherical geometries
• Reporting techniques in SQL
  • Calculating running sums and aggregates
  • Calculating rank of results

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.

Due to the 4th of July holiday, we will not have our regularly scheduled meeting in July. Instead, we’ll be taking a break this month.

Join us again on August 7th at our regularly scheduled time when special guest Jay Pipes, North American Community Relations Manager at MySQL, presents on “Join-fu: The Art of SQL.”

More details coming soon.

When: Thursday, June 5, 2008—7pm-9pm
Where: Consulate General of Canada

Topic: PHP Templates the XSL Way

When developing a web application a common question is, “what templating engine should I use?” There are several to choose from if you’re using PHP, including PHP itself. In this presentation we’ll explore XSL and how it can be used to build a templating engine in PHP. James Logsdon presents.

Mini-Talk: TBD

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.