The fifth edition of PHP Advent has come to a close. Since 2007, we have published 120 articles, many of which are just as relevant and useful today as when they were first published.

This year, Sean and I decided to choose only authors who did not write for PHP Advent last year, and we made an extra effort to seek out authors who had never written for PHP Advent before. We were pretty darn successful; our first-time authors include:

1. Derek Sivers
2. Laura Beth Denker
3. Chris Hartjes
4. Evert Pot
5. Wez Furlong
6. Samer Atiani
7. Ryan Parman
8. Michael Nitschinger
9. Beth Tucker Long
10. Jeremy Kendall
11. David Walsh
12. Gwynne Raskind
13. Matt Graham
14. David Coallier
15. Drew McLellan
16. Rachel Andrew
17. Dan Mills
18. Jeff Loiselle

The most popular article this year was Cracks in the Foundation, by Gwynne Raskind, thanks mostly to the traffic from Hacker News.

Each article this year included a developer gift idea. Here's the aggregated gift guide:

1. Any loud, ticking timer to use with the Pomodoro Technique
2. The Options Interchangeable Zephyr Acrylic Circular Knitting Needle Set and Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food
3. The Pragmatic Programmer, by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas
4. This excellent mug and good tea
5. A pack of good cigars, a bottle of fine scotch, or some appropriately-sized ammunition
6. Hyperion, by Dan Simmons
7. Awesome pancake cushions, leather cases for iPods, iPads, and MacBooks that resemble old books, and Arduino goodies.
8. whiskey stones, a nice set of tumblers, and another set of tumblers.
9. An email sent to the unsung heroes in your workplace
10. A gift bought from someone's Amazon wishlist, or a pair of noise-canceling headphones
11. An awesome plant, such as the easy-to-grow monstera deliciosa, or a terrarium of succulent plants from this Etsy shop
12. Homemade Vanillekipferl
13. Kiva loans or the Electronic Rock Guitar Shirt
14. ThinkGeek gift certificates
15. Kendall Jackson wines
16. Inside the Machine and Operating Systems Design and Implementation
17. Any of these clocks
18. Yazoo Fortuitous, New Belgium Clutch, or New Belgium Le Terroir
19. Mathematician's dice
20. An open source electronics kit from Arduino
21. One of these bibs, a t-shirt like this, or a ship of their own
22. The iNecklace or iCufflinks
23. A SousVide Supreme Demi
24. The Phantom II RC helicopter

The gift ideas were pretty fun, and I liked having an extra dose of personality from each of the authors.

I hope you enjoyed PHP Advent this year, and I hope to see you again next year. I'll leave you with these words of wisdom from Derek Sivers, probably my favorite lesson from this year:

Never forget that all of these things we do —  making money, building a company, whatever —  are all leading to the eventual goal of having enough money to do whatever we want. So, take a shortcut to that goal, and do whatever you want in the meantime.