Find out about Google’s recent embrace of PHP in Google App Engine, what it means for the PHP community, and how it can be improved even further if they were to add support for the high performing PHP framework Phalcon.

PaaS is not a new concept. In fact, hosting companies have long since provided PaaS when they sell shared-hosting services that include PHP on the shared server, although this is fundamentally different from how a PaaS business works. Take a look at a newcomer to the platform service provider arena and see how you can be one of the five lucky readers to win coupon codes worth 100€ redeemable for Fortrabbit service!

The PHP notice suppression operator is somewhat of a controversial topic in many circles. Some overuse it, some don’t use it at all, and some don’t even know it exists. See why it’s smart to avoid the operator as a general rule, and how to use it intelligently to produce better code.

Every developer knows the pain of banal mistakes. If only you had a fresh pair of eyes to look at what you did – surely these mistakes could easily be avoided! Code review can decrease the number of defects in your code and help team building. Any type of code review is better than none, so if your team isn’t using it today, suggest it. It can only help.

Jetbrains, in partnership with PHPMaster and Sitepoint, are giving out PhpStorm licenses and copies of PHP Master: Write Cutting-Edge Code… read this review of PhpStorm and then learn how you can qualify to win!

Well documented code is one of the cornerstones of professional software development, and unless you learn how to document your code so that it becomes second nature, you’re doing yourself and others more harm than good. Learn how to use ApiGen, the documentation generator, to produce highly human-readable documentation that’s also fully compatible with modern IDEs.