The Future of CakePHP

Wow - it's 2010. The future is here and appropriately we'll look to CakePHP lead cosmonaut Nate Abele to take us on an odyssey of both Cake and PHP. Join us this January as we mark NYPHP's ninth year and sit back while the monolith evolves your understanding of HAL CakePHP and the future of PHP frameworks - and we'll see you in 3001.

Now that the major PHP frameworks have reached sustained maturity, where do we go from here? With the long-awaited release of PHP 5.3, many are gearing up to take advantage of the available features with new major versions, which will change the way we create web applications. We'll take a sneak peak at the next major version of CakePHP to see what this evolution might look like, and how you can apply new techniques in your own projects.

Nate Abele is the lead developer of the CakePHP framework, an internationally ignored author and speaker, and has come to be known as the Johnny Cash of the PHP community. Having lived in the midwestern US and both coasts, Nate has currently taken up residence in the most desolate place on the planet: New Jersey. When not code-monkey'ing or yelling at people for "doin' it rong", Nate enjoys snowboarding, playing guitar, being a beach bum, and writing about himself in the third person.

Thank you to IBM for providing a great presentation space in Midtown Manhattan. As a service to our community, New York PHP Community meetings are always free and open to the public.

Big Features for Small Networks

Business computer networks come in two basic varieties. Larger companies, from giant corporations to medium-size operations, use nets that are typically built around Novell NetWare or Windows NT servers. These nets demand care and feeding from highly trained administrators. Small businesses, if they are wired at all, usually string together a few computers using the simple Windows or Macintosh built-in networking.

The increasing importance of computers in even very small businesses is exposing the weaknesses of these simple networks: They offer little security, no data backups, no easy way to share an Internet connection, and they become difficult to manage if they grow beyond a handful of computers. Help is on the way. A new breed of server can deliver big office features at low cost and require little technical skill. Eventually, they may even find their way into your home.