News Archive - 2003
Here are the most important news items we have published in 2003 on PHP.net. For the latest news, check the homepage. See more archives for 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004.
Vancouver PHP Conference 2004
[22-Dec-2003] The Vancouver PHP Users Association presents on January 22-23, a professional and technical conference focused on the PHP scripting language. The goal of this conference is to bring together some of the world's leading PHP developers and business professionals to share their experience with both students and PHP professionals in a series of talks.
PHP Community Site Project Announced
[18-Dec-2003] Members of the PHP community are to help develop the first Web site that is created both by the community and for the community. The features of this project will be driven by the needs and desires of the community as much as possible and may include such things as blogs, news, FAQs, articles, links, and tutorials.
If you would like to contribute, please , who is coordinating this project. There is a need for every type of contributor, including developers, translators, administrators, designers, writers, and advocates.
PHP Magazine in PDF Format
[15-Dec-2003] , producers of the , are pleased to announce a new monthly version of their print publication, the "", published in PDF format and distributed electronically. The first issue is available for free on .
First PHP dedicated DVD released!
[13-Dec-2003] The PHP Québec is pleased to announce the immediate availability of PHP Québec DVD. Over 6 hours of conferences, recorded in Montréal, in March 2003. DVD is subtitled in English and French, making legendary sessions from Rasmus and Zeev available anywhere in the world.
This DVD makes a nice christmas present for every PHP enthusiast. Available in or .
Call for Participation: MySQL User Conference 2004
[12-Dec-2003] The for the 2004 MySQL User Conference is now open. MySQL is looking for sessions that speak to your peers: practical, pragmatic and clueful presentations that focus on how you solved problems in a demanding or unique technical environment. Additionally, the conference is looking for solid proposals for Bird-of-a-Feather (BoF) sessions and Lightning Talks.
The call for papers closes on January 14th. The call for BoFs and lightning talks closes on February 14th. The conference will take place on April 14th to 16th in Orlando, Florida, USA.
First Bulgarian and Second Hungarian PHP Conference
[01-Dec-2003] The will be held within the framework of the 2004 Web Technology Conference in Sofia in March. The goal of the meeting is to discuss the trends and to popularize PHP among the business, education and services sectors. The organizers welcome proposals for sessions and company presentations.
Also coming in March 2004 is the building on last year's successful event. The Call For Papers is open for the conference, speakers are welcome to hold sessions and workshops ranging from PHP internals to web standard compliance. The event is exclusively in Hungarian.
Call for Speakers: PHP Québec 2004
[11-Nov-2003] The PHP Québec is pleased to announce the PHP Québec conference 2004, which will be held on March, 25th&26th 2004. We are looking for the best speakers, willing to share their experience and skills with the educated crowd of PHP programmers in eastern Canada and in the USA. PHP Québec 2004 features 3 distinct tracks:
- Professional PHP, dealing with php usage in professional environment and unusual businesses.
- Technical PHP, covering indeep details of PHP technics.
- Free software, about any free software, closely related to PHP.
New function list auto completion
[04-Nov-2003] You can probably name at least one IDE providing support for PHP function name code completion. PHP.net is just beta testing the same feature on the search page. Try selecting the 'function list' lookup option and start typing in a function name in the search field. You can autocomplete the name with the space key and navigate in the dropdown with the up and down cursor keys. We welcome feedback on this feature at the webmasters email address, but please submit any bugs you find classifying them as a "PHP.net website problem" and providing as much information as possible (OS, Browser version, Javascript errors, etc..).
PHP 4.3.4 released!
[03-Nov-2003] The PHP developers are proud to announce the immediate availability of PHP 4.3.4. This release contains a fair number of bug fixes and we recommend that all users of PHP upgrade to this version. Full list of fixes can be found in the ChangeLog.
PHP 5.0.0 Beta 2 released
[30-Oct-2003] PHP 5.0.0 Beta 2 has been released. This is the first feature complete version of PHP 5, and we recommend for PHP users to try it. PHP 5 is still not ready for production use!
Some of the more major changes include:
- PHP 5 features the Zend Engine 2.
- XML support has been completely redone in PHP 5, all extensions are now focused around the excellent libxml2 library ().
- SQLite has been bundled with PHP. For more information on SQLite, please visit their .
- A new SimpleXML extension for easily accessing and manipulating XML as PHP objects. It can also interface with the DOM extension and vice-versa.
- Streams have been greatly improved, including the ability to access low-level socket operations on streams.
There have been many changes since Beta 1, some of them documented in the ChangeLog and most language changes are documented on our PHP 5/Zend Engine 2 page.
Forum PHP in Paris, November 26 & 27th
[26-Oct-2003] The French PHP User Group is proud to announce the third annual PHP meeting in Paris, on November 26th and 27th, 2003. Developers and managers will gather to meet Zeev Suraski and other prominent community experts for two days of sessions, packed with (in French).
Monthly PHP Magazine in French launched!
[15-Oct-2003] has launched Direction|PHP, the first PHP and MySQL dedicated magazine in French. This monthly publication features indeep coverage of PHP industry, business and user cases and technical articles from PHP|Architect.
For more information, read the (in French).
ApacheCon 2003, the Global Hub for All Things Apache
[11-Oct-2003] The will be held November 16-20, 2003 in Las Vegas. More than 60 sessions highlight core and next-generation Apache server tools, offering a wide range of beginner, intermediate and advanced sessions. Learn firsthand the latest developments in Apache, as well as key open source projects, including PHP, Perl, XML, Java, MySQL, and WebDAV.
php|cruise: The World's First Ever PHP-only Cruise
[20-Sep-2003] The publishers of php|architect have announced , a five-day cruise to the Bahamas Islands featuring a lot of fun and over thirty different sessions dedicated to PHP from well known experts like Wez Furlong, Alan Knowles and John Coggeshall.
The cruise will take place March 1st to 5th, 2004. The organizers have to give away one free place on the cruise.
PHP Usage Survey Results
[18-Sep-2003] the results of the PHP Usage Survey conducted by Zend Technologies, including feedback from thousands of PHP users around the world. Thanks for all who contributed!
PHP Manual CHM Edition - 12th build
[06-Sep-2003] The 12th build of the extended CHM edition is out now, and available for download. This build contains updated content and user notes, as well as fixes the bugs found in the previous build. A new optional "phpZ" skin is also introduced in this release, courtesy of Gonzalo De la Pena Andreu. For more information, visit
International PHP Conference 2003 program online
[05-Sep-2003] The organisers of the which will take place for the third time in Frankfurt, Germany from Nov. 2 to 5, 2003 have announced the conference program. The conference board which consists of Bjoern Schotte, Zak Greant, Zeev Suraski, Thies Arntzen and Jan Lehnardt has chosen more than 40 sessions for the main program on Nov. 4 and 5 and 7 in-depth Power Workshops for the pre conference program on Nov. 2 and 3. Among the prominent speaking crowd is Zeev Suraski, Ken Coar and many others. See for more information.
Server Central Donates Server
[28-Aug-2003] Chicago-based company has donated PHP.net a brand new server with a gigabit connection. The box is a quad 2.4GHz machine with 2GB ram, so we're going to be using it to power our more resource-intensive tasks, including building the manual. Thanks, Server Central!
European Open Source Development Threatened!
[27-Aug-2003] Today sees an international day of protest against the move by the EU to make obtaining a patent easier within Europe. Such patents may cause Open Source software such as PHP to infringe on existing licenses and new ones, meaning we would no longer be safe to distribute PHP within Europe. Contact your EU Representative to get this cruicial vote blocked. Find out more at the
php{con west is announced
[26-Aug-2003] php{con returns to the San Francisco Bay Area with new sessions, PHP gurus and a whole new day of PHP-intensive learning. Their program features a full day of tutorials, three technical session tracks over two days, an all day coding marathon, Code Sprint, social events, works in progress, and presentations from PHP luminaries. Early Bird discounts end on September 26th. See the full program and register online at
PHP 4.3.3 released!
[25-Aug-2003] The PHP developers are proud to announce the immediate availability of PHP 4.3.3. This release contains a large number of bug fixes and we strongly recommend that all users of PHP upgrade to this version. Full list of fixes can be found in the ChangeLog.
Active Awards 2003 Winners
[15-Aug-2003] The are held annually to honor members of the open source community who actively contribute to open source languages and display excellence in their programming efforts. Programmers' Choice Award winners were nominated and chosen by the open source community. Activators' Choice Award winners were chosen by ActiveState's development team.
This year's nominees were: Monte Ohrt, Paul S. Owen, Stanislav Malyshev, Stig Bakken and Wez Furlong. The Programmers' Choice winner is Stig Bakken, the father of PEAR. The Activators' Choice winner is Ilia Alshanetsky, member of the PHP Quality Assurance team, developer of the fudforum package, and a major contributor to PHP development.
PHP.net news history
[15-Aug-2003] Ever wonder what was the original PHP 3.0 release announcement, what where the choices when the PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor name was choosen, or since when you can use URL shortcuts to access pieces of our site? We have digged up some of the most interesting news items published on PHP.net since January 1998, when the site started to serve its visitors. You can find these in the news archives. There is also some historical information in the manual's history appendix.
Select mirror for redirection
[13-Aug-2003] The www.php.net site tries to do the best to choose close mirrors based on all available data when redirecting users to mirror sites. Sometimes close mirror sites are unfortunately not the fastest. This is why we have added the mirror site selection possibility to our My PHP.net service, which enables users to select a specific mirror site for redirections.
PHP Magazine web site now with daily news
[12-Aug-2003] now offers daily news for PHP professionals and beginners from all over the world, helping them to stay up-to-date with the latest news on PHP and related technologies.
URL Shortcuts and Site Search
[29-Jul-2003] After many of our users requested a change in how our URL shortcuts behave when someone mistypes a shortcut, the default behaviour now is to look for a function name instead of performing a documentation search on Google. Those, who were satisfied with the Google search, can set their preference at the My PHP.net page. We are working on a better onsite search solution, Google is used temporarily to search our site.
php|architect now in print
[17-Jul-2003] The publishers of , a monthly magazine dedicated exclusively to the world of PHP, have announced the availability of a of their publication. Subscriptions are now available at a special introductory price for readers worldwide.
PHP @ LinuxTag
[06-Jul-2003] From July, 10th to 13th 2003 , Europe's largest Fair and Congress dedicated to Open Source in general and Linux in particular, takes place in Karlsruhe, Germany.
Under the motto "PHP and Friends" the PHP Project showcases PHP and related projects, like MySQL, SQLite, Midgard, osCommerce or DB Designer, at booth F21. In addition to the booth "PHP and Friends" offer an interesting programme of which are held by 24 speakers from 11 nations and cover the latest trends and technologies related to PHP, Apache and MySQL. Among the speakers are core developers of the discussed Open Source projects, for instance Ken Coar (Apache), Rasmus Lerdorf (PHP) or Kaj Arnö (MySQL).
PHP 5.0.0 Beta 1
[29-Jun-2003] The PHP development community is proud to announce the release of PHP 5 Beta 1. Both source packages, and a Windows build are available in the Downloads Section. A list of changes can be found in the ChangeLog.
Some of the more major changes include:
- PHP 5 features the Zend Engine 2. For a list of Zend Engine 2 changes, please visit this webpage.
- XML support has been completely redone in PHP 5, all extensions are now focused around the excellent libxml2 library ().
- SQLite has been bundled with PHP. For more information on SQLite, please visit their .
- Streams have been greatly improved, including the ability to access low-level socket operations on streams.
Note: This is a beta version. It should not be used in production or even semi-production web sites. There are known bugs in it, and in addition, some of the features may change (based on feedback). We encourage you to download and play with it (and if you find any!), but please do not replace your production installations of PHP 4 at this time.
PHP Usage Survey
[24-Jun-2003] Zend Technologies is sponsoring a public PHP Usage Survey. The results will be shared with the PHP Group, and will help us to better understand the ways in which PHP is being used, and what may need improvement. and get a chance to win one of 50 PHP T-shirts!
PHP 4.3.2 Released!
[29-May-2003] The PHP developers are proud to announce the immediate availability of PHP 4.3.2. This release contains a large number of bug fixes and is a strongly recommended update for all users of PHP. Full list of fixes can be found in the ChangeLog file.
Automatic Mirror Select
[23-May-2003] In our ongoing battle to fight load and keep serving you content, whenever you perform a search on www.php.net, you will be redirected onto a nearby mirror (determined using the ). You may experience a few quirks in the search until your mirrors have synced an up-to-date version of the site.
Country Detection
[04-May-2003] We are proud to introduce you the latest addition to our My PHP.net service. The PHP.net site and mirror sites now autodetect your country using the . We use this information to present events in your country in bold letters on the frontpage, and to offer close mirror sites for downloads and your usual daily work.
My PHP.net
[24-Apr-2003] The PHP website and mirrors sites now have a 'My PHP.net' page, which allows you to check what language settings you have, and enables you to set one which will override all the other detected parameters.
However, normally this is not needed, as we remember the language you used last time. Be sure to have cookies turned on for PHP.net to let this feature work!
Grant Program
[06-Mar-2003] , is proud to announce the creation of the php|architect Grant Program, whose goal is to provide financial support to best-of-breed PHP-related projects.
Participation in the program is open to all open-source projects that are related to PHP (but not necessarily written in PHP). The program is accepting submissions now and will start distributing grants in June of 2003.
For more information, visit the .
Set your own language preference
[01-Mar-2003] Starting from today, your browser's "Accept Language" setting is also honored on language sensitive pages on the php.net site. If you would like to get to the documentation page of echo for example, you can use the /echo shortcut on all mirror sites, if your browser is set to provide your language preference information to the server. This also makes the PHP error message links point to the documentation in your preferred language.
You can set your preferences under Edit/Preferences/Navigator/Languages in Mozilla, and under Tools/Internet Options/Languages in Internet Explorer. This will probably also enhance your web experience on sites providing translated content.
First Hungarian PHP Conference
[25-Feb-2003] The members of the Hungarian PHP community announce which will take place in Budapest, on Saturday March 29th, sponsored by several international and local companies. The conference offers an entirely free one day activity with several presentations addressing basic and advanced topics, as well, exclusively in Hungarian. Moreover, a five kilobyte-limited PHP contest has been started to discover the most talented PHP programmers in our country. The programme includes the first session of the so-called PHP Division which will be established with the set purpose of representing the community itself and promoting their interests in any national business and official phorums.
PHP 4.3.1 released in response to CGI vulnerability
[17-Feb-2003] The PHP Group today announced the details of a serious CGI vulnerability in PHP version 4.3.0. A security update, PHP 4.3.1, fixes the issue. Everyone running affected version of PHP (as CGI) are encouraged to upgrade immediately. The new 4.3.1 release does not include any other changes, so upgrading from 4.3.0 is safe and painless.
PHPCon East 2003 - (April 23-25, 2003)
[01-Feb-2003] PHPCon announces PHPCon East 2003 in New York City. This conference features two days of technical learning with speakers such as Rasmus Lerdorf, Zeev Suraski, Michael Radwin, George Schlossnagle and Jeremy Zawodny. PHPCon East also adds a third, full day of tutorials offering practical, cogent PHP solutions and ideas including: MySQL and PHP; Building and Consuming Web Services with SOAP; Getting Started with PHP; High Performance PHP: Profiling and Benchmarking; and more!
PHPCon East has discounts for early registration, students, non-profits, and Tutorial/Conference packages. Early Bird Deadline is March 31st. For more program information, .
Conférence PHP Québec 2003 - (Montréal, March 20&21rst, 2003)
[28-Jan-2003] The PHP Québec association announces the . The conference will take place in the École Polytechnique de Montréal, Québec, Canada.
The Conférence PHP Québec features two days of conferences, with outstanding customer cases from Canada, and cutting edge technical sessions, hosted by international experts. An exhibitor room will showroom professional solutions.
Learn more about those exciting days at .
International PHP Conference 2003 - Spring Edition (Amsterdam, May 8-9)
[13-Jan-2003] Software & Support Verlag announced the - in Amsterdam. The dates for this event for PHP enthusiasts from all over the world will be May 8 and 9, 2003. The conference venue is the RAI conference center in Amsterdam.
Like the International PHP Conferences in Frankfurt this conference will offer a first class program to an international audience of PHP enthusiasts. We are happy to ask you to submit your for the session program.
The topics are General PHP, PHP & Business, PHP & Databases, PHP Design, PHP Extensions, PHP & XML and PHP-GTK.
PEAR Out of Beta!
[11-Jan-2003] The PEAR development team is proud to announce that is finally out of its long beta period. As of PHP 4.3, the PEAR installer is installed by default. Unix support is considered stable, while Windows and Darwin are still of beta-quality.