Rebirth: The New Zend Developer Zone

h1. Welcome to the New Zend Developer Zone

p. Zend Developer Zone is an online community for professional PHP developers; bringing together news, articles, tutorials, samples and community interaction to promote the best practices and successful means of using PHP in real world applications. The Developer Zone is a community-driven site devoted to increasing the understanding and success of PHP in modern software development. This site is hosted by Zend Technologies and receives content contributions from Zend, its partners and the PHP community alike.

h2. The Desire to Rebuild

p. With our goal of bringing together the most current and relevant PHP practices and knowledge, we knew it was important for us to build our own example and embodiment of modern PHP. We have cast away both the old code and old content and are starting over. Over time, we will redevelop a complete mental picture for professional PHP development. From front-end security through back-end databases, from old fashion web forms through flashy Web 2.0 UI, from open-source to commercial vendors; we will explore every nook and cranny to find the right answers for all of our questions.

p. As part of the rebuild, this site is being constructed from the ground up using the upcoming “Zend Framework”:http://framework.zend.com. It serves as a test case as well as a show case of building an application using a best practices based framework to aid and accelerate your effort. The code and design of Zend Developer Zone will become samples and food for your learning of the Zend Framework. And since this is a community site, we expect to learn from you as well.

h2. The Developer Zone Model

p. This site will move through a series of stages, the first few being:

# Community driven news and articles to start the knowledge flowing
# New code gallery with integration into IDEs for sharing packaged code snippets
# Cookbooks for bringing together multiple sources of information to cover large topics from wall to wall
# Site and Application galleries to showcase successful applications and how they are built

p. A key factor for Zend Developer Zone is that all content must remain relevant. If a new PHP developer walks in off the street, they should find the right information for the current best practices of PHP and glide through their learning curve and stay on the safe and true paths. If an expert PHP developer moves into new terrain, we want the subject matter to be ready and waiting to serve their need. Therefore our editor staff, and you the community, will constantly update and consolidate content to keep the relevancy and accuracy high.

h2. Sit Back, Relax, …and join in

p. Start off with keeping up to date as articles flow past. Then, as we add more community contribution features, or you have that hot topic you want to get off your chest, jump in an contribute and help those that will be helping you. We look forward to working with you on this quest for a better world of PHP.

p. – Jayson Minard, Editor-in-Chief
and the staff at Zend Developer Zone

p. _p.s. We will introduce ourselves bit by bit over time through upcoming articles_