I've noted before that I'll be presenting at php|works in a couple of days; it's in the 4-5pm slot on Wednesday (13 Sep). The synopsis is public, but I wanted to give a little teaser about the presentation, in hopes of drumming up greater attendance. The talk is titled "Organizing Your PHP Projects", and the subtitle is "Project Planning in One Lesson."

Fans of Henry Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson" will recognize the kind of talk I have in store, although I don't have the time available to expound in detail the way Hazlitt does. The talk will consist of a one-sentence lesson for you to remember when deciding how to organize your PHP project, whether it's a library, an application, a CMS, or a framework. I'll then explain how to apply the One Lesson in your project, and the various follow-on effects the One Lesson will have on your project organization.

Also, I can guarantee that I will be the only presenter to provide examples and analogies using such sources as livestock, Jimmy Hoffa, and the Mir space station in a relevant and entertaining fashion. ;-)

Finally, as part of the research for this talk, I examined 40+ public PHP projects, and found a few distinct organizational patterns that I'll give in some detail. Among other things, you will learn exactly what the difference is between a framework and a CMS, and how they got to be that way. Here's one of the core slides on that part of the talk:

See you at php|works!

UPDATE: (2006-09-14) The slides from my talk are now available as a PDF file. (I'll create an audio version of the presentation after I get back from the conference.)

Are you stuck with a legacy PHP application? You should buy my book because it gives you a step-by-step guide to improving you codebase, all while keeping it running the whole time.