As I've surveyed the successes and failures of ZF1 and ZF2, I've started considering how we can address usability: how do we make the framework more approachable?

One concept I've been researching a ton lately is middleware. Middleware exists in a mature form in Ruby (via Rack), Python (via WSGI), and Node (via Connect / ExpressJS); just about every language has some exemplar. Even PHP has some examples already, in StackPHP and Slim Framework.

The basic concept of middleware can be summed up in a single method signature:

function (request, response) { }

The idea is that objects, hashes, or structs representing the HTTP request and HTTP response are passed to a callable, which does something with them. You compose these in a number of ways to build an application.

After upgrading to Ubuntu 14.10, I faced a blank screen after boot. As in: no GUI login prompt, just a blank screen. My monitors were on, I'd seen the graphical splash screen as Ubuntu booted, but nothing once complete.

Fortunately, I could switch over to a TTY prompt (using Alt+F1), so I had some capacity to try and fix the situation. The question was: what did I need to do?

This is the final in a series of eight posts detailing tips on deploying to Zend Server. The previous post in the series detailed using the Zend Server SDK to deploy your Zend Server deployment packages (ZPKs) from the command line.

Today, I'll detail how I automate deployment with zf-deploy and zs-client (the Zend Server SDK), and wrap up the series with some closing thoughts.

This is the seventh in a series of eight posts detailing tips on deploying to Zend Server. The previous post in the series detailed setting up and clearing page caching.

Today, I'm sharing how to use the Zend Server SDK to deploy your Zend Server deployment packages (ZPKs) from the command line.

This is the sixth in a series of eight posts detailing tips on deploying to Zend Server. The previous post in the series detailed setting job script status codes.

Today, I'm sharing some tips around setting up page caching, and jobs for clearing the Zend Server page cache.

This is the fifth in a series of eight posts detailing tips on deploying to Zend Server. The previous post in the series detailed how to secure your Job Queue job scripts.

Today, I'm sharing some best practices around writing job scripts, particularly around how to indicate execution status.

This is the fourth in a series of eight posts detailing tips on deploying to Zend Server. The previous post in the series detailed a trick I learned about when to execute a chmod statement during deployment.

Today, I'm sharing a tip about securing your Job Queue job scripts.

This is the third in a series of eight posts detailing tips on deploying to Zend Server. The previous post in the series detailed creating recurring jobs via Zend Job Queue, à la cronjobs.

Today, I'm sharing a very short deployment script tip learned by experience.

This is the second in a series of eight posts detailing tips on deploying to Zend Server. The previous post in the series detailed getting started with Zend Server on the AWS marketplace and using zf-deploy to create ZPK packages to deploy to Zend Server.

Today, I'm looking at how to created scheduled/recurring jobs using Zend Server's Job Queue; think of this as application-level cronjobs.