Would you support a PHP Quarterly Publication?

Let me rephrase that - Would you support a full featured quarterly publication......

I would appreciate any opinions on this. More importantly, would appreciate replies on this as in what you would look for in such a publication, Content Type, CD Distribution w/ Publication, etc., etc., etc.....

I'm not sure I get this..

First, what kind of publication do you mean? An online newletter, a magazine, a CD-ROM with scripts, ....? Is it devshed who wants to start an own magazine? If it would be a magazine, would it be US-only? If so, the rest doesn't matter for me anyway
About your rephrasel, "would I support it?" How? Do you want to know if I'd pay for it? If I would write an article for it? If I'm waiting for such a thing?!?

/Mirax = confused

Full featured publication, subscription based, litho printed, full-color, ie: Ziff-Davis publications, MaximumPC, etc., etc., etc..



No, not DevShed, not even me....lol



No, subscription based so would be available to all within Postal Regulations...



Pretty much, ya. In a round about way, would you you guys be interested in something of this magnatude. And, what kind of content would you be looking for.

Sorry if original wasn't that clear, but publication generally means magazine, book, etc.....

Ok, thanks for your explanation!Well, could be, but then again English isn't my native language and the literal meaning of publication (in my mind) is to make something public (generally in written form?), which can mean anything I described above I think?!?

But to answer your question: no, I don't think I would be interested enough to get it over here (Netherlands). There are many resources on the internet and this forum, combined with some other sites and sourceforge.net can provide me with most information I need. But then again, I'm not working professionaly with PHP (well, hardly) so I have no need for fancy, advanced stuff like conferences etc.

The content would depend on your 'audience' I guess.. do you want to provide the experienced coders with advanced discussions and topics, or do you want to give newbies tutorials to learn PHP and make them understand basic programming techniques??

Anyway, some content (independant of audience):

• tutorials (make your own ...)
• (open source) code reviews (the best free scripts)
• www sites with PHP content
• related techniques/topics (how to install/configure mysql/apache)
• talk about advanced topics
• php scripting competitions (write a program which does a certain things (a) as fast as possible (b) with as few coding lines as possible (c) ...
• interviews with PHP developers.. their view on things?
• comparisations of PHP with other similar techniques (when to use PHP, when to use ASP, Pythin, ...)
• ...... (out of inspiration... 1AM here )

Regards

I don't know, probably not. PHP is one of those things that I keep saying "someday I'll actually learn it... somday". The reality is though, to date I've never had any reason to use it. On top of that, I've never found a PHP question that I couldn't answer with the net (particularly, the manual), and all the news I think I need about it comes from the same source...

Ya, the idea sounds good, but given how much I use php I couldn't see it being worth the cash. If I used it every day at work, maybe, but even then it would have to offer content that I couldn't get easily on the web.

Maybe something that would be useful is a publication that took popular open-source scripts (PHP/PERL/JAVA/whatever) and wrote proper documentation/how-to's for them. The most useful coding articles I've read have been along the format of "Here's how to write a basic caching solution in PHP", except that they're *really* basic. So maybe if the author spend more time explaining well-written code and less time writing custom code it would be more useful.

Of course the real goal with this isn't a collection of in-depth how-to's, it an explanation of programming methodology and how to go about solving complex problems. You know, the stuff they're supposed to teach us in school

Nah, wouldn't worth anyone's while.

I don't think there is anywhere near enough information on php coming out monthly to make a magazine. Well, there *might* be if you take in account all extra modules, set up problems and core developers personal life, but who would want to read about everything on php planet?

Adding bunch of languages together and publishing them under one name wouldn't work either, as they will have to cover a lot of material and by the time it finally does go in press it will be outdated. It won't be moral saying 'php broke apache 2 support' in the end of month if working version was available from middle of the month. Such publication as an overview as computer magazines right now - may be, however making it for developers just will not be worth it.

I would have to agree with the general consensus here. As much as I love to use PHP, a magazine devoted entirely to it would be more of a waste. It would most likely be a fight to gather enough viable information to publish something new each quarter. Also it would most likely exclude one crowd of developers. Given the size of a typical magazine, there wouldn't be enough room to place both advanced coding issues and tutorial style issues. Most magazines in this area usually go with the tutorial style. Most people who have a decent knowledge of php wouldn't buy it because they would get board too quickly with the content.

Just my 2 cents anyway.

I too have to agree with what most people are saying but for slightly different reasons, although I only glanced over their posts

The main point I think has to be Onslaught's about the style of magazine, the reason he stated is why I don`t bother with most magazines and just use the net and a few good books.

But one of my own reasons would be that I end up wasting a lot of money buying magazines and just never having or making the time to read them.

The only way in which I would support such a magazine is if it was more advanced and if it touched on the subject matter of 'what's coming soon' so we can be more aware of changes such as the recent $_SESSION from $HTTP_ version in advance of the actual release.

I think unfortunatley this would have to be a free thing and it would take quite a big staff to put it together.

Managers love getting free magazines, and all the big vendors send them out, so it would be tough to charge for a similar magazine. This Oracle magazine I'm looking at is really nice print, about 200 pages, always comes with a CD with free source code or like this month it was Sun Forte. There are 14 people listed that put the magazine together. It comes out 6 times a year.

So that's what you would be competing against. But I'm sure you are very familiar with that since you mentioned Ziff Davis, etc.

Have you thought about approaching a place like Ziff for a partnership effort maybe? Since most of these magazine are full of ads, that might be a way to finance the cost, and be able to provide it for free. That's how I see most IT magazines work, you fill them full of ads so you can send them to IT pros for free. And you could have a pool of volunteers ready to make contributing articles and source code examples. It would be nice exposure for the writers.

If you need possible writing contributors, I would be interested.

You know the more I think about it, as long as it was free, this would be an awesome idea, and it would bring more of an "enterprise" image to PHP.

Maybe it could be something you put out once a quarter.

this quote needs to be in big bold blinking bright blue text at the top of the PHP forum. it's a shame how many threads could be answered in mere seconds if theyd RTFM

Maybe true, but I think it's in very poor form to assume that somebody that asks a question hasn't read the manual.

RTFM is the poorest and probably most irritating response ever created.

I think some people just like using it as a way to get off and feel superior rathar than providing helpful advice.

Hear, hear! Some people just plain don't learn very well by reading manuals. Some don't even learn well through tutorials. They aren't stupid people, they just don't learn that way. And so they come looking for someone to explain things to them. This is why we have teachers in the classroom and not librarians.

RTFM is perfectly valid in some instances. It all depends on the context of the question.