Evert Pot has a quick post showing how you can make your code fork MySQL connections for better performance.

For some of our long-running processes we use PHP. It makes total sense from our perspective, because we can re-use all our existing business logic from our main PHP web application. To make things more efficient, I recently started some work on using forks and have a couple of worker processes around.

His sample script makes use of the pcntl_fork and pcntl_wait functions in PHP to spawn off processes that will be closed off when no longer needed.

On DevShed today, there's a new tutorial posted looking at two things that can cause headaches for PHP developers (especially when evaluating and comparing values) - nulls and empty strings.

Anyone who has programmed for any length of time has encountered the concepts of null and empty strings. They are not the same, and confusing the two can cause some serious problems. This article deals with these concepts in the context of PHP and MySQL.

They start with a bit of a quiz before getting into how to handle them correctly - making null "safe" and working with it correctly in a MySQL context. SQL statements and table structures are included for their examples.

IBM developerWorks has this new tutorial they recently posted looking at making a semantic CRUD (create, read, update, delete) application that uses MySQL and SPARQL.

Create, Read, Update, and Delete (CRUD) operations are the most basic database operations, but they are also the most crucial. CRUD operations are typically done using the Structured Query Language (SQL) on relational database systems. As the Web is becoming more and more data-oriented, there is a need to shift from SQL-based CRUD operations to semantic Web-based CRUD operations. Learn how to use PHP to perform CRUD operations over the semantic Web.

They include the SQL code for both sides (MySQL/SPARQL) on each of the CRUD steps. They take these and show how to plug them in to a PHP SQL call and briefly mention abstraction and a few reasons why you might want to move to SPARQL.

Justin Carmony recently put together a blog post looking at the biggest database design oversights that PHP developers can make in their applications.

I've thought of some of the biggest oversights I've had when working with PHP and MySQL and put them in a list. This is my personal list, and I'm sure some people can think of some other oversights that belong on the list as well. This list is just for PHP & MySQL, not PHP and any database. I know many people like using software like Doctrine to allow switching between different database types. That is beyond the scope of this article.

He includes a list of five - not having a data access layer, designing for only one database connection, not including developer logging, having queries written in procedural code and no separation of reads and writes to the database.

On the NETTUTS.com site, there's a new tutorial that looks to be a basic introduction to the world of Object-oriented programming in PHP.

Numerous examples from robots to bicycles have been offered as "easy" explanations of what OOP is. I've opted to show you how OOP works with a real-life example, for a programmer. By creating a MySQL CRUD class you can easily create, read, update and delete entries in any of your projects, regardless of how the database is designed.

Their CRUD example not only serves as an introduction to OOP, but can also be an introduction to MySQL support for those that haven't used it before. They create six functions - the four for CRUD and a connect and disconnect. The full source is available for download too.

WebReference.com has another excerpt from the Addison-Wesley book "PHP and MySQL Web Development" covering the connection between PHP and MySQL using their example from previous chapters.

In this chapter, we explain how to access the Book-O-Rama database from the Web using PHP. You learn how to read from and write to the database and how to filter potentially troublesome input data.

The chapter looks at setting up the connection, choosing the table, running queries against it, getting the information from the results and using prepared statements to do it all in a bit safer way. They also briefly touch on other interface methods (like the PEAR MDB2 library).

This recent article from the Builder.com.au website shows exactly how simple it is to get a LAMP server up and running on your Ubuntu installation.

I can't tell you how many times I have been asked what is the fastest, easiest way to install a LAMP (Linux Apache, MySQL, PHP) server on Ubuntu. Well, I guess it's time I just post it here for everyone to enjoy.

You're just two apt-get calls and a few various commands away from pulling in an Apache 2 web server and a PHP5 module that has MySQL support already built in. Set the password for the MySQL installation and you're all set to go.

After looking around for different hosting for some of his projects (one that was a bit more PHP-developer friendly), Brandon Savage looked into Slicehost, a virtual server option that gives a bit more control than the larger, more typical shared hosting environments. Here's his review of the move.

I'm not sure what I was expecting, but what I got was pretty amazing. Slicehost works by offering virtual servers for each account - that is, for each account they offer, you get your own box. [...] You're responsible for putting anything on it you want. And that's where the fun starts: you really can put anything you want on it.

The slices allow you to customize your PHP builds, add in MySQL, change up Apache - whatever you want. All you need to know is how to compile things and get them working together. Slicehost isn't a good option for someone that's not familiar with linux system administration, but if you know exactly what you want and how to put it there, their pricing is one of the best out there (plus they just got bought up by Rackspace so their future seems bright).

Brian Moon has released a simple blogging application he's worked up - a super-simple, lightweight application that already has several of the common blog features built in.

Up until now, I have used Wordpress.com for my blogging. It works quite well. You can get started quite quickly and it does what most people need. My wife uses Blogger for our family blog. It is, IMO, not as nice as Wordpress.com in some ways. But, it does allow you to edit your styles (for free) and such which is nice. So, why would I want to reinvent the wheel? I am a control freak and rarely run other people's code. I know, it is a character flaw. I am working on it.

His application, WordCraft, already includes things like Akismet/CAPTCHA support for comments, custom page creation, pingback support, temlpating and email notifications. You can download the latest release (version 0.5) from his google code page.