Blog

After around 20 years as a web-based software engineer, I’ve decided to invest in learning as much as I can about website accessibility. In this short post, I want to share why, and why it might be worthwhile for you as well.

TDD is something that I strongly recommend, but it’s not without its drawbacks. In this post, I discuss the one that I get caught out by the most – testing the wrong thing.

If you're having trouble getting PHP's Memcached extension working in a Docker container, this tutorial will show you how.

Docker Secrets are a good way to start storing sensitive data that your PHP apps need in an organised and structured way. You don’t need to use environment variables, and you continue avoiding them being stored in code. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to use them, and consider some of their pros and cons.

So. Magic Numbers.

When you need to handle a 404 (not found) error in Mezzio, how do you do it? It's trivial in Laravel, Symfony, CakePHP, and other, larger PHP frameworks. But, it’s not so clear in Mezzio. In this tutorial, I’ll show you three ways to do so.

Are you getting the most out of Composer? In this short tutorial, you’re going to learn about more of its functionality including removing and updating dependencies, and configuring autoload namespaces.

If you're getting started learning PHP or want to get started, this post is for you. In it, I step you through the essential things you need and things you need to know to start your learning the right way.

Composer is one of the best package managers available for any, modern, software development language. In this short tutorial, you’re going to learn the essentials of how to use it, so that if you’re just getting started with it, you can get up and running quickly.

Is PHP worth learning in 2025, with all of the attention that other languages, such as Go, get? In this post, I'll show you a series of compelling reasons why PHP is still worth learning - even if it’s not adopted as much nor as quickly as it once was.