Why you should be using a framework

PHP frameworks like CakePHP, CodeIgniter and the Zend Framework (which I wasn't too taken with) provide a solid structure for your code whilst also offering some extra functionality that would be much harder to replicate on its own. It's important to note, too, the frameworks mentioned follow the MVC pattern, which is fairly common and what I'll talk about below — some of these benefits will apply to other patterns as well, but not all.

Of course, if you're not taken with any of the packages above you can also write your own framework, which I've done and will talk about in the next few posts. But for now, let's have a look at the common benefits of a framework.

Top 5 Frameworks in php:

Yii:

http://www.yiiframework.com
Yii is a robust, modular PHP framework that is well-suited for developing large-scale Web applications. Yii comes standard with a full host of features, including MVC, ActiveRecord, caching, AJAX libraries, authentication and authorization components, input validation, Web services, and many more.

CodeIgniter:

http://codeigniter.com
CodeIgniter is a powerful PHP framework with a very small footprint, built for PHP coders who need a simple and elegant toolkit to create full-featured web applications.

CakePHP:
http://cakephp.org

CakePHP is a rapid development framework for PHP that provides an extensible architecture for developing, maintaining, and deploying applications. Using commonly known design patterns like MVC and ORM within the convention over configuration paradigm, CakePHP reduces development costs and helps developers write less code.

Zend:
http://www.zend.com

Zend emphasizes flexible architecture and contains a host of addons, such as Zend Server, Zend Studio, and Zend Platform

Symfony:
http://www.symfony-project.org

Symfony advertises itself as a framework for enterprise applications. The framework seeks to provide a high degree of control over the configuration: from directory structure to external libraries, almost all parameters can be customized. Symfony is also bundled with a host of tools for testing, debugging and documentting a web application.

26 cool and useful jQuery tips, tricks & solutions

http://www.opensourcehunter.com/2010/02/27/26-cool-and-usefull-jquery-tips-tricks-solutions/

PHP Coding Tutorials, Tips and Tricks

http://www.webdesigndev.com/programming/15-top-php-coding-tutorials-tips-and-tricks

http://www.think-techie.com/2010/04/php-web-development-tips-and-tricks.html

20 Interesting facts about PHP

1. PHP originally stood for Personal Home Page.
2. PHP which is now officially known as ‘Hypertext Preprocessor’ was released in the year 1995.
3. Initially written as a set of Common Gateway Interface (CGI) in ‘C’ (1994).
4. PHP was originally designed to replace a set of Perl scripts to maintain his PersonalHome Pages (also known as PHP).
5. PHP was originally created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1995. He wrote the original Common Gateway Interface (CGI) binaries.
6. Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans, two developers at the Technion IIT, rewrote the parser in 1997 and formed the base of PHP 3.
7. PHP 3 was official launched in June 1998.
8. Suraski and Gutmans rewrote the PHP 3′s core, producing the Zend Engine in 1999. They also founded Zend Technologies in Ramat Gan, Israel.
9. On May 22, 2000, PHP 4, powered by the Zend Engine 1.0, was released.
10. The main implementation of PHP is now produced by The PHP Group and serves as the de facto standard for PHP as there is no formal specification.
11. On July 13, 2004, PHP 5 was released, powered by the new Zend Engine II. PHP 5 introduced full featured object-oriented programming support. It was there in PHP 3 and PHP 4 but only the basic features.
12. PHP is free software released under the PHP License, which is incompatible with the GNU General Public License (GPL) due to restrictions on the use of the termPHP.
13. PHP was originally designed to create dynamic and more interactive web pages. It is the most widely-used, open-source and general-purpose scripting language.
14. It is possible to use PHP in almost every operating system. PHP can be used in all major operating systems including Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and RISC OS.
15. PHP uses procedural programming or object oriented programming and also a mixture of them.
16. PHP is installed on over 20 million websites and 1 million web servers.
17. 75% of Web 2.0 sites are built in PHP.
18. There are about 5 million PHP developers worldwide.
19. The latest release of PHP till now is 5.3.0. It was released on Jun 30, 2009. PHP 6 is under development alongside PHP 5. Major changes include the removal ofregister_globals, magic quotes, and safe mode. The reason for the removals was that register_globals had given way to security holes, and magic quotes had an unpredictable nature, and was best avoided.
20. Some of the biggest online brands, such as Facebook, ProProfs, Digg, Friendster,Flickr, Technorati, and Yahoo! are powered by PHP.