bq. *Bootstrapping* alludes to a German legend about Baron Munchhausen, who was able to lift himself out of a swamp by pulling himself up by his own hair. In later versions he was using his own boot straps to pull himself out of the sea which gave rise to the term bootstrapping.

p. That “definition from Wikipedia”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrapping has more flair to it than I can probably give this article, but nonetheless bootstrapping is an incredibly important part of a PHP web application. It is the ignition, the launch-pad, the booster rockets, and even the safety gear for our trip through PHP Best Practices. Without a well designed bootstrap, our application will never get off the ground.

On several occasions developing database-driven web applications, I’ve been
approached by clients who want Google-style search implemented at the last minute
of the development cycle. Usually this leads to using some canned script that
crawls the website, or a hacked up search function that uses the database but
either returns too many results or none at all. On top of that, the queries
performed are too many or too slow.

Until now, most developers have been forced to use relational databases to
power search, install extra component packages, or seek out other non-php solutions.
The problem with using a relational database, such as MySql’s fulltext indexing,
is that scalability problems crop up as your search criteria becomes more complicated.

One of the features that sets the Zend Framework apart
from the others is the inclusion of a decent search module. Zend_Search_Lucene is a
php port of the Apache Lucene
project, a full-text search engine framework. Zend_Search_Lucene promises a simple way
to add search functionality to an application without requiring additional php
extensions or even a database.

J Wynia creates a cool new mashup! PHP + Amazon = Printable DVD Wallet Covers. A great sample showing a practical, real-world example of PHP doing the Web 2.0 thing.