I am in love with the Smashing Magazine site, as it's a fabulous reference site for web devs (although admittedly, they have a focus on design topics as opposed to coding). Their tagline is "we smash you with information that will make your life easier. Really." and they do live up to that. I've been keeping an eye on them for a long time, and if you don't have them in your feed reader, or on your list of favorites then you really should.

Their latest post, entitled, "Frameworks Round Up: When to Use, How to Choose" is a great upper-level synopsis of frameworks, not just for PHP, but for other languages as well. There may be framework names floating around that you weren't quite sure about... or maybe you just want a good place to send someone who's looking for a laundry list or a quick blurb about MVC.

At any rate, this is a nice place to go, and a great website.

CodeMash

Thanks to WebDevRadio and the CodeMash.org folks, I'll be attending this year's CodeMash, Jan 10-11, 2008. Lucky for me, it's about a 4 hour drive, and any time I can avoid flying to get to a conference is a good thing.

I'm excited to be a part of this interesting concept, where many languages are thrown in together and stirred up like a big batch of cookie dough. Although I've not been before, I've heard that what comes out may even be better than a fresh batch of warm chocolate chip cookies. (And if you're wondering, PHP is so the chocolate chip part of that recipe). I really like chocolate chip cookies, so it may be a tough sell for me, but I'm really looking forward to going nonetheless. There are some familiar names on the speaker circuit, and some new names (well, new to me anyway), but not one session that holds absolutely no interest for me. They all look like they would be worth your hour of time. If you're considering going, you can see the full schedule here: http://www.codemash.org/SessionList.aspx.

And if this weren't enough, the resort where the conference is being held looks cool as hell. I may bring the kids and hubby along, just because I think they'd have a blast. It's going to be at the Kalahari Resort in Sandusky, Ohio. Too bad it isn't later in the year, or we'd hit Cedar Point while we're up there.

At any rate, thanks WebDevRadio and CodeMash- really looking forward to attending! (And if anyone else is going to be there, give me a shout and we'll grab a beer.)

I should have mentioned this in my previous post, but if you'd rather read my posts in your feed reader, you'll have to resubscribe through the link in the sidebar (or at the bottom of the page). My apologies, but I'm letting FeedBurner keep track of my subscribers this time around.

After several years of Wordpress working well enough to meet my simple needs, I decided that instead of trying to upgrade from my embarrassingly old version (let's just say it was pre-themed), it might be time to start over. I'm giving Habari a shot for a few reasons. a) I really like the clean code and interface, b) It's nice to see an alternative to Wordpress, and c) I completely trust the dev team, a few of which I have the pleasure of knowing through #phpc.

So even though it's in its infancy, I figured I'd make a clean break from Wordpress once and for all and switch to Habari anyway. Well, I guess I shouldn't say a "clean break" - I've preserved my old posts at http://naramore.net/archives. So Wordpress shall linger on, but from this point on, I move forward with Habari.

Habari has been easy to install, easy to configure, and easy to manage. Obviously it doesn't have all the features of the more mature Wordpress, but it has what I need. Basic flawless functionality. And the list of plugins is continually growing.

If you're tired of Wordpress and want to check out an alternative, I'd suggest you give Habari a look.