June '09: Planning The DallasPHP Project

For months, now, DallasPHP members have been approaching me about launching a community project. Given that the average length of PHP development experience of meeting attendees is around five years, we obviously have a lot of experience and talent to draw upon. The challenge is execution. That starts with planning. At the June meeting, we will discuss options for an Official DallasPHP Development Project. The slate is clear, there are no established goals except:

BENEFICIAL: The resulting code will be made available to all members and visitors to our website, so it should be useful under a broad spectrum of circumstances -- not so specialized that it requires massive customization in order to be of help to most moderately experienced developers. If the project should ultimately be executed using a specific PHP framework, it is vitally important that the structure and logic behind the application remain flexible enough that it could be implemented using other frameworks with minimal alteration and effort. Remember, the goal is creating a successful toolset or application design, not necessarily a specific, inflexible set of PHP code. SECURE: All code should be secure and safe for members of limited experience to implement, with every necessary precaution taken to protect the required web server and data resources from malicious mischief. TEACHABLE: I CONSIDER THIS TO BE THE PRIMARY GOAL OF THIS PROJECT. There are dozens of open-source PHP projects out there which accomplish practically any procedural function a developer could desire. Most of them, however, are extremely bad examples of PHP. Trying to learn application design from some of the popular PHP projects could teach a developer very inefficient (and even dangerous) practices. The scattershot nature of the code often demonstrates very little about its origins and development. A primary goal of this project should be to demonstrate the development process, including thorough planning, methodical execution and enduring documentation. I believe that the resulting documentation of this project could ultimately be of more value to the broader PHP community than the code itself. PHP is a very simple language to learn. Project planning, good development practices, and working in a team environment are not simple, and there are not many good PHP resources or examples to be found. It should be a key goal of a User Group project to not only deliver good code, but to explain that code to less experienced developers: why key decisions about its operation were made, how and why changes evolved through the development process, and a complete and thorough explanation of how the final code operates (and can be customized). DallasPHP's goal is to serve and educate the PHP community. This project should be a landmark step towards that goal.

At this point, there are no concrete plans, no hosting arrangements, and no personnel decisions have been made. Bring to this meetings your ideas, experience, needs, suggestions and enthusiasm.

We will discuss: [list]

goals and purposes

necessary tools

ground rules and requirements

methods of communication/documentation among all developers who choose to participate

whatever else comes up

[/list] This is the very beginning of the process, and by no means will participation in The DallasPHP Development Project require your attendance at this or other specific DallasPHP meetings, but if you are interested in the project -- as a participant or as a spectator -- we would welcome your help.