July 16, 2009
Posted in Events, Members at 1:49 am by lornajane
One of our regular members, Kana Yeh, attended DPC this year and wrote about her experiences there:
This is the 3rd PHP conference I been to within a year; that is quite a lot for me! First the PHP conference in Apeldoorn by Eduvision, then PHP UK 2009 in London. Thanks to PHPwomen I could attend the most recent one: DPC09 by Ibuildings in Amsterdam.
Being in London for only 4 months and working at Touchnote seems short but it was nice to be back in Holland for a few days. I do miss Holland a bit and all the things I can’t get my hands on in London like: Hollandse drop (Dutch Liquorice candy), Hollandse nieuwe (Salted herring), frikandel speciaal and a broodje kroket. 7 more months to go and I will be able to have all of that again! and then it is my turn to miss the wonderful things in London 
The PHP conference added more sweetness to my short stay in Holland. PHP or web related conferences are mental energy boosters for me. It is very motivating to absorb the new or more in depth information and to learn more and more. I seem not to be able to get enough of it.
But, what to do if there are multiple tracks with interesting talks at the same time?…panic? I didn’t know what to do. With agony I had to sacrifice the one for the other. How do you deal with multiple talks at the same time that you both don’t want to miss?
Here is a recap of a few talks that I attended and found interesting.
An intermediate talk about Caching for Performance
by Rob Allen
Do not try to get data more than once. First measure performance, how fast/slow your website is, using software like Siege. Do not guess what is slowing down your site, instead use a profiler to find out what is going on, for example: xdebug and Webgrind (http://code.google.com/p/webgrind/): What you’ll be looking for is:
- unexpected function calls
- functions called too often
- functions take too long to return result
Types of caching in order, from fast to fastest are database, filesystem or memory (i.e. memcached, Zend_Cache). Examples of when to use caching:
- names of countries doesn’t change often (if at all), use a cached version.
- a news page, update cache when a new article is added
Another way is browser level caching. This is not forcible but it is possible to provide the hint and ask browser to cache it. Get browser to cache files that are called constantly like css, js and images that are on every page. This is ideal if visitor visits many of our pages.
State & Ajax – How to Maintain Browser and Application State in an Asynchronous World
by Paul Reinheimer
- The ‘back’ button is not ours to take! Give back to the visitors.
- Ajax requests sent have no guarantee to come back in the same order. To solve this, queue the requests. It might be slower, but it is reliable.
- One reason why visitors abandon shopping cards is because they are frustrated by the shopping experience. They give up and try somewhere else. This is easy because of the low barrier: type in an other address in address-bar. To keep your visiting shopers focus on user experience.
- User experience is the new brand! “Websites that continuously provide excellent user experiences are more likely to be visited, re-visited, shared, and praised”. Provide an experience that works exactly like it should work. For the developer it sounds like a lot of extra work. But that is 10% more work for me for 30% less effort for every user who will every use the site.
Habits of Highly Scalable Web Applications
by Eli White
- Performance = speed or rendering
- Scaling = web app that works with current and future load of new level of traffic
- Don’t write code that is meant for 1 server only.
- Use Master/Slave replication. This way you have a backup if 1 machine dies
- Isolate load on the server is a crucial aspect of scaling. CUD on master and R from the slave
- Avoid slave lag! Especially with lots of traffic and CRUDS at once.
- Partitioning: Break database in smaller ones.
- Vertical, horizontal or application level partitioning
- Cache small pieces of data that can be reused often, eg: friends stories
The conference was well organized with over 300 attendees. Not only were most talks of great interest to me but the breaks, the lunch and the atmosphere was great. The times in between talks everyone seemed to be networking and meeting new interesting people. I too met interesting new people who you see around on the internet! It was also great to see the guys and girls again who I met before at PHP chatrooms on Freenode and other conferences/events.I also had the chance to promote Touchnote postcards. Giving everyone who attended DPC09 a free Touchnote postcard to send to anyone, anywhere they wanted! Thank you Cal Evans for the nice intro in the opening of the last day. I hope everyone sent a Touchnote card to their friends or family. If not: Do it! (you have the code)..
A pat on the back for the Ibuildings’s organizing team and sponsors. I hope to see you next year with more in depth topics.
Thanks Kana! Were you at the event? Got something to share about your experience? Add a comment!
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June 3, 2009
Posted in Interviews, Members at 4:19 am by lornajane
At the recent php|tek conference, Brian Gorbett took the time to interview some of the phpwomen. You can see Elizabeth Naramore, Elizabeth Smith and Sara Golemon, joined later by Ligaya Turmelle, interviewed about themselves and the group at http://vimeo.com/4835705. If you like this video or want to join in the dicussion, leave a comment!
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April 24, 2009
Posted in Members, News at 9:45 pm by KathyReid
You can now follow PHPWomen on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/PHPWomen or by using @PHPWomen. We’re also using the #phpwomen hashtag if you’d like to flag a Tweet as of interest to our followers
Happy Tweeting!
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February 5, 2009
Posted in Events, Members, News, php at 12:13 pm by lig
If you happen to be in Jacksonville, Florida on March 9th be sure to drop in and see us at the Florida Linux Show. We should have a small booth set up to sit and chat about whatever you wish.
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January 10, 2009
Posted in Members, News, php at 8:59 pm by lig
Just wanted to bring everyone up to date on some things that are happening with PHPWomen
1) the site is currently being housed on a temporary server as we get ready to move it over to new hosting. A big thanks to Cal for hosting us the past 2 years! Because of it being on a temporary server, you may notice problems with the forums and/or links. We know of these are will be working to fix things up when we go to our next host.
2) PHPWomen.org is now a not-for-profit incorporation in the state of Florida. I have a couple of other things left to do (like get a tax id for us) but after that I hope to file for a 501(3)(c) tax exempt charity. This will more then likely to take quite a while to get – but we are at least on the road to it.
3) Various volunteers are currently trying to pick the top 3 photos for elephpant world tour. It is a hard choice and I do not envy them the choice.
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January 16, 2008
Posted in Members, News, php at 9:13 am by lig
Just noticed a cool FREE webinar for those that are going after their ZCE. Zend will be holding on the 30th of January the webinar “Everything you need to know about the PHP 5 Certification Exam“
So if you are chasing after that elusive ZCE and feel like you need more – or are considering going after your ZCE, be sure to attend. Can’t hurt anything and may just give you want you need to feel confident taking the test.
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January 9, 2008
Posted in Members, News, php at 10:07 am by lornajane
Happy New Year! Our New Year’s resolution is to dust off the mailing list and start using it – we have quite a few subscribers already so let’s get started already.
You can find the signup pages and information at http://lists.omniti.com/mailman/listinfo/phpwomen, where you will find all the information you need – if you already signed up you can also change your settings and get a password reminder from this page. So no excuses, we’ll see you on the mailing list – everyone is warmly welcome.
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October 25, 2007
Posted in Members, News, php at 10:13 pm by lig
Well maybe not so quietly. We hit our one year anniversary for PHPWomen while at Zend Con this year and had a great time. In that one year we have set up this site, been to 2 conferences sending 2 people who would not of normally been able to go, handed out t-shirts at those conferences, grown a member list of 250+ strong and made some really strong connections to the PHP Community as a whole. Not bad. Hopefully this next year will allow us to do even more, so wish us luck.
What started out as a call for the women in PHP to stand up and be noticed on Oct 8th, 2006 has grown into the current site and organization we now have. I want to send out a great big thanks to Elizabeth Naramore, Elizabeth Smith, Sara Golemon, Lorna Mitchell, and Kathy Reid for all the incredible help in building the community and site. I would also like to send a big thanks to all our booth babes – Cal Evans, Curt Zirzow, Chris Cornutt, Ben Ramsey, Paul Reinheimer, Derick Rethans, and Jay Pipes for wearing our shirts, talking to people, helping to promote our site/community at the various conferences and just being all around sex objects for us. Another big thanks has to go to Zend and PHPArchitect for donating passes to their conferences. Zend was also incredibly generous and give us a booth during Zend Con and helped us with cash to offset the cost of the t-shirts we gave out. Lastly I would like to thank the PHP Community as a whole. You have been great in supporting us and we couldn’t be here without you.
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July 11, 2007
Posted in Members, News at 8:10 pm by lig
If you are a PHPWomen member and attending the Zend conference please be sure to add your name to our page in it. We would love to know who is going – to at the very least meet you face to face and give you a t-shirt.
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January 22, 2007
Posted in Members, News at 12:54 am by lig
Ok – we are finally past the holidays and all the craziness they involve. While we have been away KathyReid has been slaving away taking her winning logo and building a new look for the site. She has started a thread seeking any feedback and if you feel adventureous – feel free to play with the CSS yourself to make any changes you think are needed. Just be sure to post the updated CSS.
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