One of the most interesting articles I’ve read on the subject, on Ted Neward’s Blog.
Reading highly recommended for every developer - but beware the long historical introduction which might not be to your taste (It definitively wasn’t to mine!).
After launching my new websites the first thing to do is to get the search engines actually know and respect them - I’ve done everything I can, set up the meta tags, used appropriate keywords in header tags and inbound links, linked from all the relevant sites, added the sites to the online directories of all sorts - but the biggest problem of the whole operation is - it takes enormously long time to actually see the results.
This is very discouraging, what can be more frustrating than a finished website which noone uses?
I think it was a great idea to actually register the domain names few months before starting work on these websites, so their names could propagate throughout the Internet and accustom search engines with these URLs.
Whenver you’ll find yourself in a situation where you click the ‘debug’ button in your browser (on the Zend Toolbar) and nothing happens - here’s where you should look:
In zend.ini there’s a line:
zend_debugger.allow_hosts=127.0.0.1/32
Just change this to your IP address and everything should work fine.
I found out about this by reviewing the Apache error log for that domain.
How else can you describe the constant nodding while reading an article like this?
It’s now official - ReliableSystems.co.uk Limited is now registered since 23/06/06!
Now the top of the TODO list seems to be finding clients interested in making their businesses smarter 
Just a short rant - I find it that quite an amazing number of specialists (developers/designers) isn’t curious about their job and tools they use.
I know lots of people which are too busy working, that they don’t have the time/interest in reading e.g. webdesign magazines (thinkvitamin.com!).
I think it might be the Long Tail I’m talking about, but I always thought that our profession requires constant learning and studying, and promotes curiosity.
If that’s the case - it’s very safe to publish your “tricks of trade” online, because your competition won’t find them anyway - not because they’re well hidden - but because they’re too preoccupied with their “Today” instead of “thinking about Tomorrow”.
That’s the secret of popularity of people like Seth Godin or Guy - they aren’t afraid to share their insight, and people tend to appreciate them for it - even if they don’t agree with everything they have to say.
I have to admit, I find it much easier to follow blogs than reading books, I think the sign of times is - I can actually find Good Content! And learn through the process - I agree, the knowledge IS only partial, but let’s face it - who has time to systemise our whole life? Learning incrementally bit by bit from different areas is so painless that you just can’t dismiss it.
And when you have some newly adapted knowledge - then it’s time to Soak…
Following up the agencies rant - in the knowledge professions, as software design/development/architecture undoubtedly is - I find attitude more important than the hard technical knowledge.
If you hire a guy which really want’s to learn and allow you to mould him in what you want him to be for the organisation - he’s much more valuable than even the best specialist, but sticking to His Own Ways.
I’m not saying that the experts’ Own Ways are in any way bad or anything - this is the lack of flexibility that I’m talking about - and the willingness to adapt.
My point is - having a guy keen to do “cool stuff”, who doesn’t know (for example) the thinking behind OO paradigm might pay off. After all, it should be sufficient to actually demonstrate to him what’s that about and go through some real life examples together - any smart guy should grasp that knowledge in a short time, and imagine what - that investment not only increases his knowledge, but also motivation to work!
You can’t just “get people to do stuff”, you have to give them opportunities to say: “I can do better!” - and then to actually achieve that.
That achievement takes time and space - but you end up in a win-win situation, having people who want to push forward - and have the know-how.
I recently re-investigated the PEAR LiveUser package - it wasn’t suitable for “grab and use” a year ago - and I was surprised to see that the changelog for this package is 4 years long! Come on, guys! What’s taking you so long?
At least there’s now installation instructions for it
But really, sometimes it’s quicker to re-invent the wheel and have your custom authentication system done i two days and reuse it - getting accustomed with LiveUser’s documentation and API would take a comparable amount of time - and bugs you’ll find will be yours bugs, not the ones in highly complex code written by an alien team of people.
We made a pitch recently for one of potential clients - unfortunately we lost the deal.
But the remains of the pitch gave us unexpected results… My website about the pitch displays first on the Google results page, and the client's website - fourth!
That's why it is no longer sufficient to merely “make a website” - it needs to be done prpoerly to allow people to find you when they look for… you :)
Having monitored the Planet PHP feed for last 6 months I felt there wasn't really all that much I needed to catch up on in PHP/MySQL realm, but the things that caught my eye were:
That would be it - at least in terms of general purpose tools and techniques in the PHP realm.