When developing, you usually have a local server set up. But only when you become a somewhat accomplished developer do you actually realize how toxic and counterproductive environments like XAMPP, WAMP or MAMP are - sure, at first, they’ll kickstart your pet project or two and you’ll be up and running in a minute or two. But soon enough, you’ll find yourself needing a different PHP version, a different database version or engine, maybe even a completely different server or even some esoteric PHP extensions. What then?
To help with this, we published a neat intro into Vagrant last year and, while that post resonated quite well with the community, many aspects were left unexplained and people were clamoring for more. Out of that need, a book was born: Jump Start PHP Environment.
Is this blatant self-promotion? Yes, yes it is.
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But I also feel like it’s an incredibly important aspect of PHP development that, despite the rising popularity of virtualization software, still ends up being skipped in most projects, kickstarting a mountain of technical debt before the project even begins.
In this book, you can learn about the different environments for your PHP apps, about using the excellent Homestead Improved, configuring your VM instance, and we even go through the ropes of building and deploying an application to a live server. Granted, the PHP side of the book is a bit on the newbie end, but it’s meant to be a comprehensive introduction to PHP environments, not PHP itself - so even if you’re an experienced PHP user, I strongly believe you’ll learn something new.
Did you give the book a read already perhaps? What did you think? Let us know your likes and dislikes and we’ll make sure they get fixed. Discuss in the book’s comments, or here!
