Ask difficult questions to PHP specialists - PHP Classes blog

By Manuel Lemos
manuellemos.net
<email contact>

Contents

- PHP Specialists forums
- Answers from skilled PHP developers
- Great new solutions for tough problems
- Post your difficult PHP questions for free
- Follow the latest PHP Specialist forum posts
- Further enhancements


- PHP Specialists forums

In July 2007, the PHPClasses premium subscriptions were launched, as it was announced here:

http://www.phpclasses.org/blog/post/68-Launched-premium-serv ...

These premium subscriptions provide an additional set of services to site users that subscribe them by paying a small fee. The whole set of available premium services is described in the premium services page:

http://www.phpclasses.org/premium/

Among other services, premium subscribers have full access to the PHP Specialists forum.

http://www.phpclasses.org/discuss/topic/specialists/forum/ge ...

In these forums, a premium subscriber may ask tough questions about PHP and related matters for which he would like to get some answers to solve difficult problems that he may be having in his PHP developments.

Here you can see a demonstration video:

http://www.phpclasses.org/premium/videos/specialist-forums-d ...


- Answers from skilled PHP developers

Only the site users that have a premium subscription can participate in the PHP specialist forums. This includes developers that paid a premium subscription, as well developers that earned a life-time premium subscription for being nominated to the PHP Programming Innovation Award.

http://www.phpclasses.org/award/innovation

In general, nominated developers are skilled above the average PHP developer, as they have shown that they have talent to create innovative PHP components that often solve non-trivial problems.

Many of the nominated developers that got their premium subscription have joined the PHP specialist forums. They are willing to participate providing answers or suggestions to solve the problems that are posted there.

One thing that motivates skilled developers to participate in these forums, is that the site exposes their contacts in the forum pages, in case anybody wants to hire them for a job that requires a skilled PHP developer.

Each message that a premium subscriber posts gets him more advertising, letting potential employers know he is available for providing paid PHP consulting work.


- Great new solutions for tough problems

So far the forums has been relatively successful. Many interesting questions have been posted. Some of the questions did not get an immediate solution, but they motivated some developers to later create advanced solutions to address the problems that were described.

Some problems that are posted give hints for new innovative classes. Submitting innovative classes may get the developers that create them nominations for the innovation award. In fact, several questions posted in these forums actually caused that effect.

For instance, this thread about how to get screenshots of PHP pages hinted the creation of two classes for taking screenshots of Web pages using Internet Explorer under Windows or PHP-Gtk under Linux and other platforms. Both classes were nominated for the innovation award and their authors won other prizes besides the life-time premium subscription.

http://www.phpclasses.org/discuss/topic/specialists/forum/ge ...

Screenshot
http://www.phpclasses.org/win-screenshot

GtkMozEmbed Screenshot
http://www.phpclasses.org/gtkmozembed-shot


Another thread discussed how to access remote Windows shared files from PHP that require authentication by a specific Windows user. A couple of months later another nominated developer published a class that solves the problem by acting as stream wrapper and lets PHP access authenticated remote Windows shares with regular PHP file access functions.

http://www.phpclasses.org/discuss/topic/specialists/forum/ge ...

smb4php
http://www.phpclasses.org/smb4php


- Post your difficult PHP questions for free

As you may realized by now, the value of the PHP Specialist forums is great. However, since it is only available to premium subscribers, the number questions have been submitted so far is not very high.

To address that limitation, from now on every regular user of the site is entitled to post one question in the PHP Specialist forums for free, i.e. without having to pay to become a premium subscriber.

Notice that this offer is available only to regular users. This means that if you registered to the site recently, you are not yet entitled to this offer. Long time registered users may benefit of the offer, even if they have not been accessing the site much lately.

To assure the interest of the questions, free messages posted by regular users are moderated, i.e. they need to be approved by a moderator before they are published in the site.

Only premium subscribers can see all the replies to the messages posted in these forums. Non-premium subscribers that take advantage of this free post offer can obviously see all the replies to their own posts.

So, if you are having difficult PHP problems that were not able to find any solutions, feel free to post your question now here.

http://www.phpclasses.org/post_forum_message.html?topic=spec ...


- Follow the latest PHP Specialist forum posts

Whether or not you are already a premium subscriber, you can follow the latest threads that are posted in the PHP Specialist forums by subscribing to the feeds in either RSS 1.0 or 2.0 formats.

RSS 1.0
http://www.phpclasses.org/discuss/topic/specialists/forum/ge ...

RSS 2.0
http://www.phpclasses.org/discuss/topic/specialists/forum/ge ...

You may also get notifications by e-mail subscribing them here:

http://www.phpclasses.org/subscribe_forum.html?topic=special ...


- Further enhancements

Features like the PHP Specialist forums were implemented to address the needs of site users that suggested to have something like this in the site.

The premium subscriptions is one of the sources of revenue of the PHPClasses site. It helps keeping the site financially viable, so it can continue to operate while providing valuable services to the PHP developers that use it.

Becoming a premium subscriber is one way that you can help the site. The premium subscription fee was kept intentionally low to make it affordable to any user that would like to contribute to the site while getting additional benefits.

http://www.phpclasses.org/premium/


Another way to help is to provide suggestions to enhancements to the site like this. If you have ideas for other improvements that are not yet in the plans, please follow up posting a comment to this article.