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9th anniversary announcements

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This article talks about the latest improvements in the site PHP specific job board.

It also presents a new idea that will allow any site user propose a new design for the site to help improving the its presentation and usability.




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Contents

* 9th anniversary

* More jobs for PHP developers
- PHP developers in great demand
- New free job posting option

* New site design created by the users
- The problem of changing the site design
- Making a contest is the solution
- Alternative for those not happy with the winning design
- What design features can be changed

* Other features that you would like the site to have



* CONAPHP - PHP National Congress in Brazil

Before the main topics of this post, let me tell you about great upcoming PHP event in Brazil.

It is a known fact that the best PHP events and initiatives are organized by the PHP community members, as they are the ones that know better what matters to the PHP community.

In Brazil this is not different. The members of several PHP user groups have gathered to organize a large PHP event in São Paulo on October 18, 19. Since this is an event that interests mostly to Brazilian PHP users, please excuse me for giving a brief overview of the event in Portuguese.

Devido a desentendimentos com a empresa organizadora, inúmeros membros de grupos de usuários de PHP do Brasil não apoiam mais o evento anteriormente conhecido por PHP Conference Brasil.

Em vez disso, essas pessoas se organizaram independentemente e criaram um novo evento para promover o PHP devidamente no Brasil chamado CONAPHP - Congresso Nacional de PHP. Este evento vai decorrer em São Paulo em 18 e 19 de Outubro dentro de um evento maior de software livre CONISLI 2008. São esperados pelo menos 1500 congressistas.

Para além dos habituais nomes da cena de PHP Brasileira, o CONAPHP vai contar com palestrantes internacionais reputados como Andrei Zmievski (Smarty, PHP-GTK, PHP 6 Unicode) e César Rodas (PHP Programming Innovation Award 2007, Google Summer of Code, WordPress).

Eu, Manuel Lemos, também deverei estar presente como palestrante. Ainda não decidi o tema da palestra que deverei dar, mas muito provavelmente será sobre como conseguir bons empregos em PHP e evoluir na sua carreira trabalhando com esta linguagem.

Já se espera que o CONAPHP será mais um evento de PHP bastante concorrido. Se você estiver interessado em participar como congressista, vá já inscrever-se para aproveitar o preço baixo de inscrição. Os interessados em palestrar também devem já propôr as suas palestras no site do evento antes que termine o prazo.

conaphp.com.br/


* 9th anniversary

The PHPClasses site is 9 years old now. Actually, it was launched on June 24 of 1999, as you may see in this archive of the original announcement message.

marc.info/?m=93020963511392

Now its time for a brief reflection on what was done recently, as well what is planned to be developed in the 10th year of existence of the site.


* More jobs for PHP developers

- PHP developers in great demand

A year ago, the site launched the premium services. For those that are not aware, this is a package of better site services for users that pay a small subscription fee.

Last month the site launched a PHP specific job board to address the needs of PHP developers and employers that want to hire them.

The demand for PHP developers is high. Many jobs have been posted. In just 1 month, 1500 PHP developers viewed the available jobs. More than 150 developers have applied to those jobs.


- New free job posting option

Posting jobs requires a prior payment. Urgent jobs cost more because the site notifies a larger number of site users immediately. Normal jobs cost less, but first the site makes the jobs available to premium subscribers, and then to all other users after a week of delay. That is one of several advantages of being a premium subscriber.

However, since this is a new service, some employers are not yet sure if it is worth paying for posting their jobs in this site. Therefore, the site has made available a new job posting option named "Very delayed". It allows employers post jobs for free during 1 month, but the jobs are available only to premium subscribers until the last week of the month.

This is an experimental job posting option. The idea is to encourage more users to become premium subscribers. If all goes well the additional revenue will be used to invest in better site features. Otherwise, the site will reconsider the available job posting options.

If you are a PHP developer regularly looking for more PHP jobs, please consider this idea as an encouragement to become a premium subscriber. The more jobs are posted, the more revenue you can make working in PHP jobs.

In this page there is a table that lets you check these and other benefits of being a premium subscriber when compared a regular site users. That will help you to determine if it is worth upgrading to a premium subscription:

phpclasses.org/premium/#benefits


* New site design created by the users

- The problem of changing the site design

There are many things that could be done to improve this site. Over the years the site received many improvement suggestions from its users. Several of the best features of the site were suggested by the users.

That is great but some features take a significant amount of time and effort to implement. Others raise challenges that are not easy to solve in a way that pleases the majority of the users.

One frequently received suggestion is to redesign the site. As I explained before, changing the site design is not a big issue.

The greatest challenge is to change the current design to another that pleases more users than the number of users the change may displease.

Another issue is that the site received many offers from users that want to redesign the site for free. How could the site accept the proposal of one user without upsetting all others that were turned down?


- Making a contest is the solution

The solution that may be less problematic is to turn it into a contest. Everybody can propose a new site design. Then the users can vote on the best design. The most voted design is picked to be used from then on.

The winner will earn prizes besides fame. I intend to give away to the winner a big elePHPant plush toy and a money prize of at least USD $1000. That would be like a payment for the artwork supplied by the winning author. The actual money prize amount may be higher. It depends on how well the site finances evolve in the future.

files.phpclasses.org/graphics/eleph ...


- Alternative for those not happy with the winning design

An important aspect is that the site can only use one site design. Allowing multiple site designs makes the site use a much larger amount of server side cache files and memory that is not affordable.

If an user wants to use a design different from the winning design, he may be allowed to do if he paid to become a premium subscriber. That will help paying the additional resources the site will consume.

I think this is the best way to solve a recurring problem, making it fair to everybody. That is why this is the feature that I intend to focus in the upcoming weeks starting now.


- What design features can be changed

Now the question is: what aspects a new design should allow?

I intend to allow changing things like graphical aspects (colors, icons, styles, etc..) that can be defined using a new CSS definition. I also think of allowing to change the page header and footer HTML templates using a drag and drop visual editor to easily allow different navigation types.

Certain things like the presence and position of advertising cannot be changed much because that may affects directly the site revenue. Other than that, what a site designer would like to be able to change?

I am sure that people with better artistic skills than me, have a clearer idea of what they would like to change. Therefore I have created a new site forum to discuss the site design.

If you are interested to help by giving suggestions about things of the site design you would like to be able to change, please post your suggestions in this thread:

phpclasses.org/discuss/topic/site/f ...


* Other features that you would like the site to have

I would like to add several other features, but just providing a way to propose new designs will give a lot to work. Lets deal with only one big problem at a time.

Still, if you would like to make any comments or propose other features that are not exactly related with the site design, please feel free to post your comments to this article here.



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Comments:

2. Payment option - Aayaz Shah (2008-11-22 21:03)
Paypal Credit Card option does not have "Pakistan" in list... - 10 replies
Read the whole comment and replies

1. Thanks Manuel - Steve Beuret (2008-08-01 03:59)
A pat on the back to Manuel and all the contributors.... - 1 reply
Read the whole comment and replies


Trackbacks:

2. Web design 2.0: o usuário redesenha seu site favorito (2009-12-10 03:18)
Site PHP Classes é um sucesso, tem ótima audiência, mas parte do público não gosta do design...

1. 9th Anniversary & Site Design Contest (2008-08-01 15:18)
Along with mentioning their 9th anniversary, the PHPClasses.org website has announced a contest for all of those out there who want to help improve the look for the site...



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