Matt Williams has a quick post to his blog about using the combination of PHP and Apache's Solr to more powerful searching than something like a MySQL fulltext index can give you.

When data sets get large and MySQL database querying to search become too load heavy and slow, full indexing is required. Several solutions are available but in this article I will be demonstrating the Apache foundations Solr Java Lucene implementation. For this a Java build will be required. Linux or Mac is less of a problem but for windows I use the Apache Tomcat server.

He shows ho to use the Solr PHP interface to make the connection to the server, ping it to be sure the connection is working and, based on the schema and search information, return a set of results in a PHP object.

On PHPBuilder.com today there's a new tutorial from Jason Gilmore showing how you can interface your application with the Google Analytics service through its HTTP API. Jason shows ho to use the Google Analytics API PHP Interface tool to take most of the hard work out of it.

Google Analytics (GA) is the de facto solution for analyzing web site traffic and trends. [...] If you're not regularly relying upon Google Analytics or a similarly capable analytical service, then you're left at a major competitive disadvantage in terms of your ability to effectively understand the interests, demographics, and technical requirements of your audience.

Using the Google Analytics site is a pleasant experience, but having to log in just to check your numbers each day can get tiresome quickly. Jason introduces a way, using the GAPI class to pull things like traffic statistics and account information. More examples of how it can be used are shown on the GAPI website.

New from NETTUTS.com there's a recent tutorial showing you how to use the GD graphics library (bundled with PHP) to resize images on the fly.

Ever wanted an all purpose, easy to use method of resizing your images in PHP? Well that's what PHP classes are for '" reusable pieces of functionality that we call to do the dirty work behind the scenes. We're going to learn how to create our own class that will be well constructed, as well as expandable. Resizing should be easy.

The simple eleven-step process (don't worry, it sounds worse than it is) has you go from a basic image and, with the help of a custom PHP class, create a resized image based on a type such as "landscape", "auto" or "exact". Full code is included for you to cut and paste or you can download the source and have the full code ready and waiting.

On NETTUTS.com there's a (quite complete) tutorial posted that walks you through the creation of a forum using PHP and MySQL as a backend to store the posts.

In this tutorial, we're going to build a PHP/MySQL powered forum from scratch. This tutorial is perfect for getting used to basic PHP and database usage.

They start with the backend and move their way forward, setting up the MySQL tables - categories, replies, users and topics. They describe each of them in a bit more detail before getting into the code. They show how to create template for the site (with a little CSS) and include code to create users, authenticate them, set up their permission levels, making categories/topics and much more.

The full code for the forum application they've created can be downloaded here.

On the InsicDesigns blog there's a new tutorial on using the MiMViC framework

MiMViC is a modular and lightweight PHP 5.3+ Web application framework designed to help build dynamic and robust Web sites. It's theory is based on minimal and framework emphasizes on only core glue for your complex PHP web sites. Today I will show you how to create a shout-box using the MiMViC framework. It won't take you more than 15 mins to get the job done and have friendly URLs as well.

Sample code for the "shoutbox" is included. Their example shows an Apache setup and a MySQL backend (complete with namespace-enabled code). A simple form to take in a "shout" works directly with the framework to save the information quickly and easily.

On the Joomla community site there's a recent post made of a video from the Joomla Day conference in Australia about creating a Joomla template from scratch. The presenter is Norm Douglas.

Norm Douglas recently presented about how to create a Joomla template from scratch at the Joomla Day in Melbourne, Australia, on 13 February 2010. This is a very informative 77 minute presentation and also covers using the Firebug Firefox addon, code editors and much more.

He covers some simple tools you get you started, the basics of HTML to create a sample layout and looks at CSS definitions that can make the layout look a bit better. Firebug (the plugin for Firefox) helps make locating the different parts of the page easier with a highlighting feature.

Marc Plotz has written up a new tutorial for PHPBuilder.com introducing a simple way to get started combining PHP and Ajax with a "Google Suggest" type of example.

When you use Ajax with PHP, PHP does the calculations that it needs to do on the server and sends the result back to the page. You then use JavaScript to display these results in a predefined place. The demo application you will learn how to build in this article is a very simple Suggestion box, just like the one that Google made famous and thus ushered in the Ajax era.

The example (you can download it here) creates a basic form text field and the Javascript you'll need to make the callback to the waiting PHP script. It doesn't use any external libraries (like jQuery or Prototype) so be ready for bare-bones Javascript.

In a new post today Raphael Stolt shows you how to use MongoHq, a cloud-based hosting service, to host a Zend Framework application that uses the MongoDb as a backend. The tutorial focuses on the bootstrapping process to make the framework play nicely with its hosting environment.

Since [MongoHq] went live a few weeks ago I signed up for the small plan and started to successfully re-thinker with it in an exploratory Zend Framework based application. [...] Therefore the following post will show how to bootstrap such an instance into a Zend Framework based application and how to use it from there in some simple scenarios like storing data coming from a Zend_Form into a designated collection and vice versa fetching it from there.

He shows how to create a new resource to make the MongoDb connection available through the entire application, to be used as needed. The resource creates the MongoDb connection based on the options from the config file and catches any exceptions that might happen along the way. As mentioned, he also includes a Zend_Form example that stores some proposal information in a collection in the database.

In the latest post to his blog Brian Swan hows how to interface PHP with "Dallas", a newly introduced technology from Microsoft that lets developers and users of the Azure platform share data with REST-based APIs.

Given that MIX10 is happening this week and that Microsoft Codename "Dallas" (CTP2) was just released, I thought it would be appropriate to look at how to consume "Dallas" data with PHP. [...] In this post I'll build a simple web page that displays some of the free "Dallas" data. And, I must say, I was really surprised at how simple and easy this entire process was.

The system shares out data sets (a list is here) including things like feeds from the Associated Press, InfoUSA, NASA, NAVTEQ and quite a few others. Brian includes screenshots on how to sign up for a data feed, some PHP that can be used to connect to it (just a REST request) and a simple web page that can output the results.

On PHPBuilder.com today there's a new tutorial walking you through the creation of a simple WordPress plugin that shows the latest YouTube video from your blog's channel.

Think of plugins as components where you put your functionality and widgets as components of your user interface. Building your own WordPress plugins and widgets will make your blog truly original, and all you need is basic PHP and HTML knowledge - and your imagination.

They help you get started with defining a few constants, registering the actions with WordPress, building the widget (with complete cut-and-paste-able code) and including it in your WordPress blog. You can download the complete source if you want to get started quickly.