In this issue: Digitalus Framework · FaZend · hierarchical CMS data · cloud application development · web-based retrieval · and much, much more.

Fat-Free Framework is a new minimalistic yet very functional PHP framework. It supports PHP 5.3, and requires no additional extensions other than the core extentions shipped with PHP. It sets itself apart by trying to be usable, not the usual.

The Habari Community has released version 0.6.4 of its PHP based open source blogging platform. This release centers mainly around security enhancements and workarounds for changes made to PHP itself.

PHP 5.2.13 has been released, bringing to life over 40 bug fixes, including three security updates.

With the 1.10.2 maintenance release now available, the Zend Framework community is now turning its attention to the 2.0 release. Among the new features planned are namespaces, autoloaders and even a discussion on git vs. subversion.

Symfony 2 benchmarks released on his site show that Symfony 2 is faster than many of the common PHP frameworks out there, but Solar developer Paul Jones has had trouble confirming his findings.

Being a PHP developer is so much more than writing PHP code. A PHP professional is part developer, part scientist, part salesperson and part garbage collector.

Here are five skills that, while not strictly about PHP, will make your chances of landing that PHP job much higher.

Facebook’s PHP-to-C++ transformer made waves when it was announced earlier this month. Now, an initial release is finally available for download and public consumption.

This week’s oddWeek podcast features our friend Nate Abele. We discuss Cake PHP, Lithium and the trials of starting open source projects.

Facebook’s Jason Sobel explains how the social media giant improved their overall end-user performance. This in-depth look at what they did provides a roadmap for any site facing heavy traffic. Oh—and they show you t-shirts you can’t have.