PHP has one of the largest developer communities in the world, yet we have no community gathering place like those you can find for other languages (Perl has http://use.perl.org/, for example).

Want to help change this?

I am coordinating the development of a web site that is built by and for the PHP community. Its features may include such things as:

• Personal blogs for all registered users
• Frequent community news and user comments (Slashdot style)
• Weekly summaries of key mailing lists (such as php-general)
• Weekly summaries of other news from related communities
• News from various user groups (such as NYPHP)
• Links, FAQs, articles, tutorials, and other helpful documentation

More importantly, the features will be driven by the needs of the community and not any one person. This list is just an example of the most common features found on other community sites.

Will this site seek to eliminate other PHP sites that offer one or more of these features already? Absolutely not. My hope is to help bring the community together, both the people in the community as well as all related sites.

I have spoken with O'Reilly, and they have agreed to support us in this endeavor with servers, bandwidth, administration, and anything else we need. All we have to do is provide the people to develop and maintain the site and its content.

You don't have to be an expert to help out. I need people to fill the following roles (multiple people can fill the same role, and a single person can fill multiple roles):

• Site management and global vision
• Coding standards and software architecture
• Security audits and general guidance
• Weekly summary of php-general
• Weekly summary of php-internals
• Weekly summary of general community news
• News item selection and posting (users can submit suggested news)
• Database design
• Software development (PHP, Perl, etc.)
• PHP user group representatives (updated news from your group)
• Content writers (FAQs, articles, tutorials, etc.)
• Graphic designers, user interface specialists, etc.
• Translators
• Advocacy (get the word out, solicit volunteers, etc.)

There are likely many other roles to be filled. If you think you can help out a lot, please consider the first role, site management and global vision. If you want to help but don't feel like you fit into any specific role, don't worry about it (any help is very much appreciated).

There will be mailing lists, CVS, and other tools available to assist in the creation of this site. More information about these things will be given to those who are interested in being involved.

Please send me an email if you are willing to help. Mention where you are interested in helping and any information about yourself that you think is important. This information is not intended to determine whether anyone is "worthy" or any silliness like that, but it is rather to help organize the contributors so that everyone is doing something they enjoy.