Last week was a particularly newsy one for PHP world. Let's take a look at some of the headlines:

A bit of an upgrade, this latest alpha release offers the following changes from 1.4.0.a10:

• Add new "unusualbaseinstall" role type that allows custom roles similar
  data/test/doc to honor the baseinstalldir attribute
• fix Bug #4095 : System::rm does not handle links correctly
• fix Bug #4097 : Wrong logging in PEAR_Command_Test
• make pear/pecl commands list only pear/pecl packages
• fix Bug #4161 : pear download always leaves a package.xml in the dir
• make PEAR_Remote messages more helpful (include server name)
• make list-upgrades only search channels from which we have installed packages
• remove <max> tag requirement for php dependency

You can download this latest package, or read more about it at http://pear.php.net/package/PEAR/download/.

Zeev finally jumped on the blogwagon and started writing to the masses on April 7. It's down and dirty and can be read regularly at http://www.suraski.net.

In case you were worried that your smarty templates were leaving you open to attacks, the good people over at smarty.php.net have cleared things up and set the record straight. Vulnerability issues that were patched in recent releases were only applicable to those using the template security features, and by those users "that have untrusted third-parties editing template files." You can get the skinny by visiting http://smarty.php.net.

Planning a site redesign can be a daunting task, and php-tools.net wants to hear from you. Let them know what they need to do to improve their new site, or check out their announcement for yourself at http://blog.php-tools.net/archives/121-php-tools.net-relaunch-plans.html.

That's right, all 720 pages total -- available for free, in PDF format. While it's a bit late for me (as I already shelled out the $28.69 to Amazon), do yourself a favor and save a few bucks by going to http://www.phptr.com/content/images/013147149X/downloads/013147149X_book.pdf.

phpMyAdmin's version 2.6.2 has been released as a stable version, with numerous upgrades and bug fixes. You can download this latest release at http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/downloads.php. Oh yes, and if you're bored with your current phpMyAdmin theme, they've just released some new themes for your viewing pleasure. You can check them out at http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/downloads.php?themes.

Thanks to Chris Shiflett, who provides us with the elusive answers to the Zend Certification Self-Test, in a recent blog post. Quite an interesting post for those of us who didn't do so hot on the self-test. The self-test can be found at http://www.zend.com/store/education/certification/self-test.php?begin=1 and Chris' answer key can be found at http://shiflett.org/.

Fixing some minor bugs and other "non-critical" issues was the focus of this latest release of phpBB. Changes in this release include:

• Hardened author and keyword search a bit to not allow very server intensive searches
• Fixed full path disclosure in bad word parsing
• Resetting complete userdata array in session code if authentication fails
• Fixed bug in moderator control panel where certain parameters could lead to an "error creating new session" sql error
• Fixed bug in session code where empty page ids could lead to an "error creating new session" sql error
• Fixed html handling in signatures if html is turned off globally
• Fixed install.php problem with PHP5 register_long_arrays option turned off
• Fixed potential issues with styling system
• Added correct class to login_body template file
• Removed file db/oracle.php from package
• Removed version number from message body page in /admin (if user is not an admin)
• Fixed case-sensitivity issues in postgres7.php

You can read about this latest release and download it by going to http://www.phpbb.com.

See you next week with more news and tidbits from the PHP world!