For the past couple of years, Node.js has been drawing increasing amounts of attention as a promising web technology. While it has some strengths, like being event driven, some people just want to stick to PHP. If you’re one of them, you might want to take a look at a similar project for PHP named React.

The Laravel developers have been hard at work contributing some major improvements to the framework. Testability isn’t a problem any more, and neither is decoupling. Laravel 4 very well may be one of the greatest PHP frameworks currently available thanks to their hard work… so check out what’s new!

Continuing to look at Fuel CMS, a lightweight and flexible alternative to heavier-platforms, this part of the series focuses on models and walks you through creating a simple Guestbook to introduce each aspect of working with them in Fuel CMS.

When you hear the abbreviation CMS, you probably think about Drupal, Joomla, and even WordPress. However, there are alternatives to those heavy hitters if you want something more lightweight or flexible. If you’re look a simple administration interface, or integrate custom application code into the site, then it might be worth your while to explore Fuel CMS. This part of the two-part series looks at Fuel CMS in general and how to create pages and views.

Maybe you’ve experienced the pain of working on a PHP application which uses third-party libraries and then trying to keep them and their dependencies up to date. If so, Composer can soothe your pain. It can get you the libraries you want at the versions you need. Dependency management can be a hassle-free experience using Composer!

If someone mentions the term Content Management System, probably WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and others come to mind. But the only content types supported by WordPress out of the box are pages and articles, which is fine for most websites, but what if you want more? Luckily you can use the Pods Framework; it’s a WordPress plugin which enables you to add custom content types and their management to your WordPress installation.

For those who struggle with maintaining their database schema, or who have problems applying updates and often revert them, there is a solution. The Laravel Framework offers you migrations. Learn what migrations are and how they can help you maintain you database with confidence and ease.

Laravel’s site says the framework is a “clean and classy framework”, and that “freeing you from spaghetti code, Laravel helps you create wonderful applications using simple, expressive syntax.” But are these claims true? Let’s take a look.