This is a love story about a mildly adventurous PHP programmer who decided to look for new approaches to newish problems. He chose to leave the well-known comforts of PHP and search for a comprehensive Node.js framework. Eventually, our hero found the young but awe-inspiring MeteorJS, and they made many beautiful… umm… web apps, together. The real story is not the journey to find MeteorJS, but the sweet love which developed, happily ever after. –by Alan Blount

In the wild, PHP developers are often required to know and be proficient at front end development too. This field has changed significantly in the last few years due to the introduction and the growth of tools like Grunt, Bower, and Yo. In this article, we will discover what they are and how they can help us enhance our workflow, paying attention to highlighting the similarities and the differences with their task-related PHP software. –by Aurelio De Rosa

Forms are everywhere. Every application that interacts with a user uses forms in some manner. Whether you are logging into a website, filling out a survey, or signing up for a service, you are interacting with a form that someone had to create in order to get some info from you. Now you have a PHP application that needs input. How do you safely, securely, and reliably obtain that input or other data from your users? –by Joe Ferguson

Almost every new PHP application today is built, or composed, using Composer. Using this awesome tool, we can declare and install our application’s dependencies in a structured and standardized way. What if, though, we want to make our application extensible using plugins that others will write? In this article, we will leverage Composer as a means of building and distributing plugins for our applications, instead of creating our own plugin infrastructure. –by Maarten Balliauw

When I went to a university for a computer science degree, one of the required classes was Introduction to Java Programming. I remember the first thing the professor taught seemed very confusing at the time. I can still hear his voice very clearly: “So to begin with, we’ll type… string string equals new string.” –by Aaron Saray

Ever since PayPal came on the scene back in 1998, the world began to see that online commerce is not only possible, but readily achievable. In this month’s Education Station, I am covering one that holds special significance for me as it’s from the land of my birth, Australia. It’s called, appropriately, Pin Payments. Describing themselves as “Payments, Rebooted”, Pin Payments allows you to integrate e-commerce, subscription billing, ticket sales, online invoicing, and mobile payments into your application.
–by Matt Setter

Archie's travels continue. Check back each month to see where else Archie has been spotted.–by Archie

There’s a new kid on the block and, in my opinion, is the future of web design. I want to take some time right now to introduce you to it briefly. –by Eli White

We are supposed to wow everyone with our brilliance at every turn, but hard work is not synonymous with isolated work. Don’t let your comfort zone keep you captive. –by Beth Tucker Long