Joomla for PHP Developers (ditching com_content) by Anthony D Paul

We'll take a look at Joomla from the developer perspective, setting aside the typical configurer process and instead introduce the custom component structure, where to put your function libraries, a better theme format, core modifications for a better UX and more.

RSVP @ http://www.meetup.com/DC-PHP/events/23235481/

We are having a $bbq with our Friends!

Our meeting for June will take place on Tuesday June 14th from 5:30 - 8:30. Please make sure you RSVP ASAP - http://meetu.ps/1tqKc

Unless you work exclusively on one of the existing CMSes--and maybe even if you do--you've probably been tempted to build your own comprehensive CMS at one point or another. Before you give into temptation, let me tell you why you shouldn't...and then give you some tips I learned while building, maintaining, and abandoning an in-house CMS, because you'll likely give into temptation anyway. I'll cover the pros and cons of having your own CMS, and then, focusing on a typical MySQL-based medium-sized CMS, a few lessons I learned, including the dangers of coupling and inheritance, dos and don'ts of performance improvement, some stuff to avoid in database design, and a successful, simple way to deal with representing trees of content in databases. Let my pain be your gain.

What's included in the meeting?
Free Beer
e-book drawing for 1 lucky person
Networking
Fun!

Please RSVP @ http://www.meetup.com/DC-PHP/events/16720206/

Mobile web development is now more important than ever, and you need to get in the game. Learn about device-specific development as well as general development to mobilize your apps. This talk will use Zend Framework, but the basic concepts can be used anywhere.

Shaun is a Developer for CACI, Inc. working on site at the Library of Congress, where he works with Zend Framework. He is a member of the Zend Framework community review team and one of the organizers of the DC PHP user group.

In his spare time, he works on side projects including Brewery DB, where he is in the process of enabling the site for mobile use on multiple devices, like the iPhone, iPad and Blackberry.

See the meetup page for more info - http://www.meetup.com/DC-PHP/events/16374884/

Practical Unit Testing

Unit testing is an elusive subject: developers tend to agree on its importance but move right along without actually doing it. Many times their reasons are both valid and resolvable. This talk seeks to answer three basic questions:

* What is required for me to write effective unit tests?
* How can I sell my team on writing unit tests, even for legacy code?
* What strategies work for implementing unit testing in my organization?

This 90-minute talk will cover these areas and more. From the School of Hard Knocks will come useful information for practical unit testing in any development shop.

Speaker - Brandon Savage
Twitter - @brandonsavage
Website - www.brandonsavage.net

Meetup Details
Location: 1333 14th Street Northwest Washington, DC
When: Wednesday, March 9, 2011 at 7:00 PM
RSVP: http://www.meetup.com/DC-PHP/events/15978960/

Topic: Hosting and deploying a PHP application on AWS with RightScale
Speaker: Zvi Band

RSVP @ http://www.meetup.com/DC-PHP/calendar/15047736/

Zvi is a local Entrepreneur and developer.
Zvi tinkers in PHP, Ruby on Rails, and dabbles in Facebook, Twitter, and other Social networking tools.
He is responsible for

Structo (@structorules, http://struc.to/...) a start-up
skeevisArts (@skeevisarts http://skeevisarts.co...) his company
and Proudly Made in DC (@proudlymadeindc http://proudlymadeind...) a local listing of DC Startups

and...much, much more!

Fee Beer and an eBook drawing!

RSVP @ http://www.meetup.com/DC-PHP/calendar/15047736/

RSVP - http://www.meetup.com/DC-PHP/calendar/15722742/

This talk will be an overview of a lot of things that most people, companies, government agencies, etc. will need to make their websites accessible. By making your websites more accessible to people using assistive technologies like JAWS and Dragon Naturally Speaking you make it better for all and Google as well.

We plan on giving everyone an opportunity to make their websites more accessible by using the Section 508 guidelines and WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) 2.0, along with code examples too.

We plan on covering the following topics:

• Valid and Semantic HTML and CSS
• Skip Navigation
• Text and Fonts
• Color and Contrast
• a:hover and a:focus
• “click here” and “remove”
• Headings (h1, h2, h3, etc.)
• Tables
• Forms
• Fieldset
• Legend
• Labels
• Search
• Screen Readers, Voice Recognition Software, etc.
• JAWS
• NVDA
• Dragon Naturally Speaking
• Miscellaneous Accessibility Issues

This class will have hands on work with code examples and demos to show the difference of how accessible code is for those using assistive technologies and how non accessible code is using JAWS, NVDA, etc.

Speakers will be
William Lawrence - @v
John F Croston III - @jfc3 @AccessibilityDC @AccessibilityCampDC

You can RSVP for this talk @ http://www.meetup.com/DC-PHP/calendar/15722742/

Free E-Book Raffle - Courtesy of O'Reilly Media!

Don't forget to bring some drinks!

This month we will do a couple of rounds of 10 - 15 minutes lighting talks and some drinks!

Talks on the List:
Shaun Farrell- Developing for mobile with Zend Framework
Andrew Nacin - What's new in WordPress 3.1
Russell Heimlich - What Pew Research Center is doing with WordPress and ePub books
Chris Hall - UML
John Croston - Making the web Accessible!

We will also have a drawing for a free O'Reilly eBook!

Make sure you RSVP @ http://www.meetup.com/DC-PHP/calendar/15065411/

Once again, we thank Fathom Creative for the amazing space! They allow us to use the space free of charge and support the Metro DC PHP Community. If you are coming feel free to bring a six pack of beer.

We will gather around 6:45 and try to start promptly at 7pm. Also, ChurchKey is next door if after the meeting we want to continue to chat!