PHP Architect Podcasts

By PHP ArchitectTechnology

PHP Architect Podcasts episodes

May 15The PHP Podcast 2026.05.14
 
 
PHP Podcast – May 14, 2026
Hosts: Eric Van Johnson & John Congdon
Another fun episode of the PHP Podcast! Here’s what we covered:
PHP Tek Is Four Days Away
The countdown clock is basically ticking in real time — PHP Tek 2026 in Chicago is just four days and ten hours out as this episode begins. Eric flies Friday, John flies Saturday, and the team descends on the venue Sunday to get the trailer unloaded, the booth assembled, and everything tested before the conference kicks off. The conference magazines — ordered three weeks ago and still showing “printing” on Tuesday — pulled through at the last minute and are set to arrive at the venue tomorrow. That’s cutting it close, but it counts.
Win a Free PHP Tek Ticket — Live on Air
John put a full conference ticket up for grabs: DM him on any social platform, and he’d draw a winner on the live stream. The caveat? You had to be watching live — audio listeners are out of luck on this one. The lucky winner drawn on air was Jeffrey Davidson, who will now be at PHP Tek. Eric offered to even bring him to the team’s Saturday minor league baseball game if he flies in early enough. Jeffrey gets a hand-printed sticker name badge, but he’ll have a badge.
New PHP Architect Conference Merch
Fresh shirts are coming to the PHP Tek booth courtesy of Clayton Kendall, who is producing the apparel. The new design goes with a smaller logo placement — a more subtle, wearable-anywhere look compared to the big bold prints. If you’re headed to Chicago, swing by the PHP Architect table and see what’s there.
Holly’s Conference App Gets a Vendor Mode
The PHP Tek attendee app built by Holly (developed by CodeLorax) has been upgraded ahead of the conference. What started as a schedule browser with conflict detection and push notifications has now merged with a vendor lead scanning tool. Attendees can log in by scanning the QR code on their badge, and vendors can scan attendee badges to capture leads — all in a privacy-preserving way that doesn’t expose raw contact data. Eric’s wife Bek figured out the app entirely on her own without being told anything, which remains one of the best usability endorsements you can give.
Something Big Is Happening in the PHP Community
Eric teased something he can’t officially talk about yet — a community acquisition that’s still working through the legal and DNS transfer process. A new droplet has been created. Joe has already figured out what it is. Eric is too excited not to bring it up but too responsible to spill the details before it’s official. The plan is to announce after PHP Tek. If you want to know early, apparently getting Joe drunk at the conference is your best strategy.
Grok AI Exploited via Morse Code in Bank Transactions
A video from the Dave’s Garage YouTube channel surfaced a genuinely unsettling AI exploit: someone used a Grok-powered AI banking agent and embedded hidden instructions inside transaction memo fields — written in Morse code. The agent decoded the dots and dashes, interpreted them as instructions, and followed them, ultimately losing somewhere between $154,000 and $200,000 in crypto transfers. This is prompt injection in its most creative and alarming form yet. The attack surface for AI agents hooked into real financial systems is not theoretical — it’s happening.
TanStack Hit by NPM Supply Chain Attack
The TanStack ecosystem — the popular query, router, and table libraries — was hit by a supply chain attack via GitHub Actions cache poisoning. The attack vector was a forked pull request: a malicious fork can trigger GitHub Actions workflows and potentially inject poisoned artifacts into the build cache, which then get picked up by the legitimate package. Simon Hamp from NativePHP caught it and raised the alarm in the PHP Architect Discord. It’s a good reminder that the supply chain attack surface extends well beyond just what’s in your `composer.json` or `package.json` — your CI pipeline’s caching behavior matters too.
PHP Tek Job Fair — Wednesday Afternoon
There will be a job fair at PHP Tek this year, scheduled for Wednesday afternoon. At least one confirmed hiring manager will be there. If you’re looking for PHP work, or if you’re a company looking for PHP talent, this is worth planning around. Eric and John both see it as a natural fit for the conference — the PHP community is tight-knit enough that a job fair actually means something.
Eric’s Birthday Spa Day in Palm Springs
Eric’s wife Bek surprised him with a birthday spa day in Palm Springs. It was his first massage ever, and he paired it with a mineral soak in the natural springs. He came away thoroughly convinced — the combination of the mineral water and a proper massage left him feeling better than he expected, and he’s already thinking about going back. Beck planned the whole thing, and Eric was appropriately grateful.
John’s First Couples Massage
John has now also had his first couples massage, and it did not go quietly. He opted for deep tissue — which means the therapist was working hard — and his wife, in the room next door, was apparently convinced something was wrong based on the sounds coming through the wall. John described it as the kind of massage where you’re not entirely sure if you’re being helped or attacked, and the answer turns out to be both. He’d do it again.
PHP Architect Becomes Padres Season Ticket Holders
Eric and John are now official San Diego Padres season ticket holders — their first year in the program. As first-timers, they’re at the very bottom of the seniority ladder, which means they were among the last to pick seats. John blames Eric for not signing up years ago. There’s an upcoming Wednesday day game against the Dodgers with available tickets if anyone in San Diego wants them — reach out to John.
Links from the show:
PHP Tek 2026 — Chicago
TanStack — Open Source Data Tools for the Web
NativePHP — Simon Hamp’s Native App Framework for PHP
PHP Architect Store
PHP Architect Discord
Host:
Eric Van Johnson
X: @shocm
Mastodon: @[email protected]
Bluesky: @ericvanjohnson.bsky.social
PHPArch.me: @eric
John Congdon
X: @johncongdon
Mastodon: @[email protected]
Bluesky: @johncongdon.bsky.social
PHPArch.me: @john
Streams:
Youtube Channel
Twitch
Connect & Hire
PHP Architect Website
Twitter/X
Mastodon
Hire PHP Developers
Looking to hire PHP developers? Email [email protected] – Joe and the team are available for consulting, infrastructure work, Ansible playbooks, and code review.
Partner
This podcast is made a little better thanks to our partners
Displace

Infrastructure Management, Simplified
Automate Kubernetes deployments across any cloud provider or bare metal with a single command. Deploy, manage, and scale your infrastructure with ease.
https://displace.tech/

PHPScore
Put Your Technical Debt on Autopay with PHPScore

CodeRabbit

Cut code review time & bugs in half instantly with CodeRabbit.

Music Provided by Epidemic Sound
https://www.epidemicsound.com/
Join Us Live Next Week
Youtube Channel
Got feedback? Join us on Discord at discord.phparch.com
The post The PHP Podcast 2026.05.14 appeared first on PHP Architect.
57 min
May 14Community Corner: Global Accessibility Awareness Day with Joe Devon

In this episode, Scott talks Global Accessibility Awareness Day with Joe Devon the creator of the day.
Links:
Our Discord – https://discord.gg/aMTxunVx
Buy our shirts – https://store.phparch.com/products/community-corner-podcast-t-shirt
Joe’s Links:
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/joedevon/
Global Accessibility Awareness Day – https://accessibility.day/
Accessibility and Gen AI Podcast – https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/accessibility-and-gen-ai-podcast/id1759047581
Scott’s Links:
Website – https://scott.keck-warren.com/
Bluesky – https://bsky.app/profile/scottkeckwarren.bsky.social
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-keck-warren-91689810/
Mastodon – https://phpc.social/@scottkeckwarren
PHP Architect Social Media:
X: https://x.com/phparch
Mastodon: https://phparch.social/@phparch
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/phparch.com
Discord: https://discord.phparch.com
Subscribe to our magazine: https://www.phparch.com/subscribe/
Partners
This podcast is made a little better thanks to our partners.
Displace
Infrastructure Management, Simplified
Automate Kubernetes deployments across any cloud provider or bare metal with a single command. Deploy, manage, and scale your infrastructure with ease.
https://displace.tech/
PHPScore
Put Your Technical Debt on Autopay with PHPScore
https://phpscore.com/
CodeRabit
CodeRabbit – Cut code review time & bugs in half instantly with CodeRabbit.
https://www.coderabbit.ai/
Music Provided by Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/
#phpc #php #communityCornerPodcast #podcast #phptek
The post Community Corner: Global Accessibility Awareness Day with Joe Devon appeared first on PHP Architect.
19 min
May 08The PHP Podcast 2026.05.07
 
 
PHP Podcast – May 7, 2026
Hosts: Eric Van Johnson & John Congdon
Another fun episode of the PHP Podcast! Here’s what we covered:
PHP Tek Is 11 Days Away — And Everyone Is Stressed
The conference countdown is real: 11 days, 10 hours, and a handful of seconds on the clock. John’s travel plans hinge entirely on little league baseball — if his team wins their Tuesday playoff game, he coaches the Saturday game, then bolts for the airport. If they lose Tuesday, he’s sad but gets to Chicago earlier. Meanwhile, Eric is grinding through the PHP Tek TV redesign, trying to wire up the SessionIze API for schedule imports instead of doing it all manually from a CSV, and sending the design team a novel’s worth of badge and signage requests. Holly’s conference app now has notifications working: select a talk, and if Eric or John move it around, you’ll get pinged. Keynote and lunch notifications are also on the table for attendees who can never find the room.
Conference Stress Dreams: The Motorcycle Gunman Edition
John woke up mid-dream to his wife opening the blinds for the school run — and the dream he was pulled from was genuinely unhinged. He was in an Uber waiting for Uber Eats to arrive at an intersection when a motorcyclist pulled up behind them, got off, shot out the tire, then came to John’s door and started shooting at the lock to get in. The Uber app had briefly flashed the word “threat” on the map. John laid the seat back as far as it would go. The driver just stood there. Then the blinds opened and it was just a Thursday morning. John’s verdict: it’s conference stress. Hard to argue with that.
JS Tek — An Honest Conversation
John decided to say the quiet part out loud: JS Tek hasn’t brought in the JavaScript community the way they hoped. The PHP world is unusual in paying for speaker travel and hotel rooms; Joe in Discord confirmed this barely happens outside PHP, and somebody speaking at a Ruby/Rails conference once told Eric they not only weren’t reimbursed for travel — they had to buy their own conference ticket. Eric’s takeaway: the JS track itself is a great idea for PHP developers, but trying to recruit an entirely new community into the fold didn’t work out. Next year’s structure will probably look different.
The PHP 7-to-8 Upgrade That Failed Three Times
Eric’s consulting team has been struggling with a client upgrade from PHP 7 to 8 — unusual, because they’ve done this many times and know the pitfalls. After three failed attempts, a deep dive revealed the culprit: an abandoned Laravel Shift branch left behind by a previous developer who had started an upgrade and walked away, with missing config files baked right into the inherited codebase. The fix wasn’t just another attempt — it was getting the management team to produce a proper testing playbook, and more importantly, actually getting trained on the application. The team had been fixing bugs in code they’d never seen working correctly. Today they finally got that training session, and Eric says the excitement and “ah-ha” moments from his developers made it clear this should have happened much sooner.
The Database on the Same Server Problem
A related discovery from the same client: the database lives on the same machine as the application. Every upgrade means shutting the app down, exporting the database, migrating it somewhere else, and starting over. Eric’s head doesn’t compute why this is still the case in 2026. Even a second machine designated as a database server would be a massive improvement. In a moment of uncomfortable honesty, Eric also admitted that PHP Architect’s own conference site has the same setup — Forge makes it so easy to throw a database on the same box that you just don’t think about it, until you do.
Laravel Shift, Laravel Cloud, and the Pre-Check Tool
The conversation circled back to Laravel Shift — JMAC’s automated upgrade tool — which Eric notes has become less essential as Laravel’s upgrade paths have smoothed out considerably compared to the wild west of early Laravel development. But Shift is still out there and still useful. More interestingly, JMAC has a new free Shift specifically for Laravel Cloud readiness: run it against your app and it’ll tell you whether your application is compatible with Laravel Cloud’s serverless model, flag any system commands that won’t be available, and help you understand what services you’d need. Laravel Cloud itself is Taylor’s “don’t worry about servers” deployment platform, and if you’re not a sysops person, having a Shift that holds your hand through the setup could be the difference between trying it and not.
PHP Internals Made Readable — Externals and PHP RFC Watch
Eric plugged two tools for following what’s happening in PHP core. The first is externals.io — a much more readable front-end for the PHP internals mailing list, with search, read-tracking, and threaded discussions. The second is a newer discovery: php-rfc.watch, which focuses purely on RFCs, showing what’s active, what’s been voted on, and how the votes broke down. It’s more of a quick-glance dashboard than a full discussion forum. Eric also highlighted a specific RFC from Ben Ramsey: a proposal to update the PHP license, accompanied by a detailed blog post called “PHP License Simplified” that walks through the history and rationale. If you’ve ever been curious about why license choice matters (especially at the enterprise level where legal teams block open source based on license type), Ben’s post is worth the read.
NeoVim’s Flash Plugin — Used Wrong for Years
Eric has been using Flash.nvim, a NeoVim navigation plugin, for years. He recently discovered he had been using it completely incorrectly the entire time. He thought he understood what it did. He did not. A YouTube video explaining the plugin properly (titled something like “How to Jump Anywhere Instantly in NeoVim”) revealed that what he’d been doing was essentially pressing the wrong keybinding and stumbling through a fraction of the plugin’s actual functionality. This sent the conversation into a longer Vim origin story: Eric learned Vim because he was flying around the country installing Cyborg firewalls on remote servers and Vi was just there. John picked it up at an enterprise job and never thought about alternatives until he saw a developer using MacVim to write Rails and had his mind blown. The core message: you can use a tool for decades and still be using it wrong, and that’s okay — but watch the tutorial.
Eric Doesn’t Know How Old He Is
Eric has been confidently telling people for a full year that he’s 55. His wife Bek has known for some time that this is not correct. The moment of reckoning came when Eric asked Alexa: “If I was born in 1969, how old would I be now?” Alexa hedged on the birthday thing but confirmed the range. Bek stepped in. Alexa, a full 30-60 seconds later, stepped back in and confirmed: “Your birthday’s May 8th, you’re turning 57.” Eric is apparently going directly from 55 to 57, having skipped 56 entirely. He also noted at the Padres game with his wife that their Costco membership is older than a 13-year-old kid they saw on the Jumbotron, and that it could legally babysit him. John is turning 50 this year. Everyone is fine.
Links from the show:
externals.io — PHP Internals Discussion Reader
PHP RFC Watch — Track Active PHP RFCs
Ben Ramsey: PHP License Simplified
Laravel Shift — Automated Laravel Upgrade Tool
Laravel Cloud
How to Jump Anywhere Instantly in NeoVim (Flash.nvim Tutorial)
PHP Tek 2026 — Chicago
PHP Architect Store
PHP Architect Discord
Host:
Eric Van Johnson
X: @shocm
Mastodon: @[email protected]
Bluesky: @ericvanjohnson.bsky.social
PHPArch.me: @eric
John Congdon
X: @johncongdon
Mastodon: @[email protected]
Bluesky: @johncongdon.bsky.social
PHPArch.me: @john
Streams:
Youtube Channel
Twitch
Connect & Hire
PHP Architect Website
Twitter/X
Mastodon
Hire PHP Developers
Looking to hire PHP developers? Email [email protected] – Joe and the team are available for consulting, infrastructure work, Ansible playbooks, and code review.
Partner
This podcast is made a little better thanks to our partners
Displace

Infrastructure Management, Simplified
Automate Kubernetes deployments across any cloud provider or bare metal with a single command. Deploy, manage, and scale your infrastructure with ease.
https://displace.tech/

PHPScore
Put Your Technical Debt on Autopay with PHPScore

CodeRabbit

Cut code review time & bugs in half instantly with CodeRabbit.

Music Provided by Epidemic Sound
https://www.epidemicsound.com/
Join Us Live Next Week
Youtube Channel
Got feedback? Join us on Discord at discord.phparch.com
The post The PHP Podcast 2026.05.07 appeared first on PHP Architect.
1 hr 13 min
May 01The PHP Podcast 2026.04.30
 
 
PHP Podcast – April 30, 2026
Hosts: Eric Van Johnson & John Congdon
Another fun episode of the PHP Podcast! Here’s what we covered:
The Drone Slayer Strikes
Eric and John wrapped up a Padres game at beautiful Petco Park in downtown San Diego — and things got weird on the way out. A rogue drone started buzzing around a busy intersection, lingering on a guy on a scooter, before making a fateful attempt to fly in front of Eric’s car. It did not make it. The controller came running out, Eric kept driving, and John has already dubbed him “the drone slayer.” Eric still hasn’t looked at whether his wife’s car got scratched, which feels like the bravest choice of all.
Baseball Week Never Ends
The reason today’s episode started an hour early? Baseball. John’s week was wall-to-wall: a Tuesday night little league game, the Padres game with Eric on Wednesday, practice Thursday night, the playoff draft reveal Friday, a little league game Saturday, and another Padres game Sunday. Eric pointed out John was wearing his own last name on a jersey to a Padres game, which opened up a whole sidebar on why anyone buys a $200 jersey with a player’s name on it when players change teams every two years anyway.
Walking Pneumonia and the Power of the Right Antibiotic
John’s week was also scrambled because his son had been diagnosed with regular pneumonia — but after not getting better, a second doctor visit revealed it was actually atypical (walking) pneumonia, which requires a completely different antibiotic. Once on the correct medication, his son bounced back almost immediately. The kid had been pushing himself trying to feel well enough for sixth grade camp, but there’s really no faking it with the wrong treatment.
The Archie Situation — AI Standups Gone Sideways
Eric has had a rough stretch after Anthropic shut down OpenClaw, the platform that powered their internal Discord bot Archie (a.k.a. Alfred). Archie had been running daily team standups, generating weekly summaries, letting team members tag it with updates throughout the day, and even setting reminders. Everyone got spoiled by it. Since then, attempts to migrate to Ollama — both locally and through the web service — have been plagued by slow response times and dropped messages. Eric is close to pulling the plug and going back to the old manual method, and he’s not happy about it.
Claude SSH’d Into Eric’s Server and Fixed Everything
For weeks, Eric had been fighting a broken Postiz Docker container — a self-hosted social media scheduling tool he uses to post across platforms. After updates broke it and multiple attempts at a fresh install still left it broken, he dropped the problem in Claude’s lap and explained the whole situation. Claude asked for permission to SSH into the remote server on Eric’s Tailscale network, and Eric said sure. Thirty minutes later, Claude had identified the culprit — a Temporal workflow engine losing its configuration on restart — wrote a fix script, configured the service to reconfigure properly on boot, and even set up a cron job to restart the container on reboot. Eric’s still trying to find that chat to review exactly what it did, but the service is running.
GitHub is Getting Hammered by AI Agents
GitHub has had a rough patch of outages, and the numbers tell the story: 20 million new repos per month, 1.4 billion commits, 90 million pull requests — with a dramatic spike right at the start of 2026. Part of the culprit? AI agents being unleashed on codebases to automatically open pull requests from backlog tickets. Eric has a client doing exactly this, and while it sounds impressive from the owner’s perspective (“look at all this work getting done!”), the developers on the ground report that a high percentage of those AI-generated PRs require significant human correction before they’re anywhere close to mergeable. The comparison to Reddit’s early explosion — and the one engineer who basically didn’t sleep for two years — felt pretty apt.
The GitHub Security Vulnerability Nobody Talked About
As if the outages weren’t enough, GitHub quietly disclosed a serious security vulnerability: a specially crafted git push — using malformed options in the push metadata — could allow arbitrary code execution on GitHub’s own servers. Eric had to dig to find the blog post because GitHub was not exactly shouting about it. To their credit, they state that their investigation found no evidence the vulnerability was ever exploited in the wild. But knowing that a specific sequence of bytes in a git push could have handed someone the keys to GitHub’s servers is genuinely unsettling.
The Creator of Ghosty Is Leaving GitHub
Mitchell Hashimoto — creator of the Ghostty terminal and formerly of HashiCorp — announced he’s leaving GitHub, where he’s been a user since 2008 (user #1299). This comes shortly after the Zig programming language made the same move, also citing reliability concerns. Eric was mildly skeptical of the “announcing I’m leaving” genre of posts, pointing out that GitHub doesn’t especially need your permission to stop using it. Notably, Hashimoto’s post doesn’t say what he plans to use instead. John joined GitHub in 2009, which led to a fun live expedition through his commit history — turns out he got serious about coding right around July 2013, roughly when DiegoDev landed its first client.
Update Composer. Like, Right Now.
PHP developers tend to set Composer up and forget about it — but there’s been a serious security vulnerability patched in a recent release that you absolutely want. The fix is simple: just run composer self-update. It updates in place and keeps a rollback copy in case anything breaks. While you’re at it, if you have global Composer packages installed, run composer global update to catch those too. Eric noted that Composer should really warn you when you’re significantly behind versions, the way Claude Code does. Until it does, just make a habit of it.
Linux Kernel Exploit — Patch Your Servers
A CVE was shared in the phparch Discord that affects Ubuntu, Amazon Linux, and Red Hat: a Linux kernel exploit that lets an attacker gain root access with a remarkably small payload — around 732 bytes targeting setuid. It’s a good reminder that the old sysadmin badge of honor (“my server has 5-year uptime, never rebooted”) is the wrong mentality now. With tools like Terraform and infrastructure-as-code, spinning up a freshly patched machine is the move. Keep your operating systems current, especially Linux servers running in production.
Holly Built a PHP Tek App — And It’s Already Good
Community member Holly built a native attendee app for PHP Tek, available now in beta on iOS (via TestFlight) and Android. You can browse the schedule, select the talks you want to attend, and it’ll warn you if two of your picks are in conflict — a “merge conflict,” as Eric put it. Best of all, it sends push notifications when sessions you’ve favorited get moved or rescheduled, which happens constantly at tech conferences. Eric’s wife installed it without being told anything about it and figured it out on her own — about as good a usability test as you can get. The app is built natively in Swift and Kotlin. Be kind to Holly — this is a gift to the community.
PHP Tek in 19 Days + New PHP Architect Merch
PHP Tek is nearly here — 19 days out in Chicago. A brand new PHP Architect elephant is coming (tentatively named Holly, after a live-stream vote). Eric also walked through new merch at store.phparch.com: a v-neck version of the classic rainbow PHP Architect shirt, and his personal labor of love — the “I have standards, specifically PSR 0, 1” tee — which he admits has sold exactly zero copies. If the hotel room block is sold out by the time you read this, reach out to the team directly and they’ll see what they can do.
Links from the show:
Postiz — Open Source Social Media Scheduling
GitHub Security Advisory: Remote Code Execution via Git Push Options
PHP Tek 2026 — Chicago
PHP Architect Store
PHP Architect Discord
An update on GitHub availability
Migrating from GitHub to Codeberg
Ghostty Is Leaving GitHub
Securing the git push pipeline: Responding to a critical remote code execution vulnerability
Composer 2.9.6 fixes Perforce Driver Command Injection Vulnerabilities (CVE-2026-40261, CVE-2026-40176)
Copy Fail: 732 Bytes to Root on Every Major Linux Distribution.
Host:
Eric Van Johnson
X: @shocm
Mastodon: @[email protected]
Bluesky: @ericvanjohnson.bsky.social
PHPArch.me: @eric
John Congdon
X: @johncongdon
Mastodon: @[email protected]
Bluesky: @johncongdon.bsky.social
PHPArch.me: @john
Streams:
Youtube Channel
Twitch
Connect & Hire
PHP Architect Website
Twitter/X
Mastodon
Hire PHP Developers
Looking to hire PHP developers? Email [email protected] – Joe and the team are available for consulting, infrastructure work, Ansible playbooks, and code review.
Partner
This podcast is made a little better thanks to our partners
Displace

Infrastructure Management, Simplified
Automate Kubernetes deployments across any cloud provider or bare metal with a single command. Deploy, manage, and scale your infrastructure with ease.
https://displace.tech/

PHPScore
Put Your Technical Debt on Autopay with PHPScore

CodeRabbit

Cut code review time & bugs in half instantly with CodeRabbit.

Music Provided by Epidemic Sound
https://www.epidemicsound.com/
Join Us Live Next Week
Youtube Channel
Got feedback? Join us on Discord at discord.phparch.com
The post The PHP Podcast 2026.04.30 appeared first on PHP Architect.
1 hr 13 min
April 30PHP Alive And Kicking: Episode 29 Elizabeth Barron

Elizabeth Barron returns to the show just four weeks after her debut appearance for a wide-ranging follow-up on her first months as Executive Director of the PHP Foundation. Elizabeth shares the key findings from her community listening tour, covers the upcoming PHP community survey in partnership with JetBrains, talks about the Foundation’s plans for transparency, documentation, and guest blogging, and discusses the challenges of the PHP newcomer experience. The episode also features a candid conversation about public speaking anxiety, conference culture, and the enduring warmth of the PHP community.
Topics Covered
PHP Foundation Community Findings Main Topic
Elizabeth published a blog post summarising the findings from her listening tour across the PHP community. Four key themes emerged:
Foundation transparency — Many people don’t know what the Foundation is doing; the website is too generic and needs to better reflect the team’s actual work.
Marketing of PHP — How PHP is perceived externally, and how the community can better promote the language.
Community support — What the Foundation can do to better support developers, user groups, and sub-communities.
The language itself — Feedback and ideas relating to PHP’s ongoing development.
Elizabeth noted that the volume of feedback was a good sign — silence would be a much bigger problem. A Part Two of the blog post is in the works and will cover strategy and next steps.
Newcomer Experience & Documentation Gap
A recurring theme from the community feedback was how hard it is for brand-new developers to get started with PHP:
There is no single central “landing page” for newcomers — help is scattered across Discord, Reddit, local user groups, and elsewhere.
The PHP manual assumes a baseline of programming knowledge that true beginners don’t yet have.
Many existing beginner resources have not been updated as the language has evolved.
PHP lacks the kind of gamified, beginner-friendly learning apps that Python and JavaScript enjoy.
Mike noted that most coding bootcamps are JavaScript-first, leaving a gap for PHP-based introductory learning.
Elizabeth is exploring whether the Foundation can help coordinate and amplify existing resources rather than compete with them — and fill in the gaps that remain.
Matt Stafer’s recent involvement with the Foundation was highlighted as a potential access point for reaching newcomers, given his large following.
PHP Community Survey (with JetBrains)
The PHP Foundation is running a community survey in partnership with JetBrains (makers of PHPStorm).
The goal is to generate open, usable data that anyone — including the Foundation, JetBrains, and the broader community — can analyse.
Community members were invited to suggest their own questions (the submission window closed on the day of recording).
The full survey was expected to launch in early June.
Foundation Transparency & Hiring Update
The Foundation’s developer hiring process (which had been open in a previous cycle) was paused while Elizabeth settled into the role and internal processes were stabilised.
Many of the Foundation’s developers currently work in silos; improving collaboration and communication across the team is a near-term priority.
The Foundation’s blog will be opened up to guest bloggers — Elizabeth teased an upcoming post she’s excited about but couldn’t yet name.
Developer applications are expected to reopen in autumn 2025.
Public Speaking Anxiety & Conference Culture
An unexpectedly personal and engaging segment where all three speakers opened up about their experiences with social anxiety and public speaking:
Mike shared that despite running the show and talking to guests regularly, he struggled to approach familiar faces at PHP conferences in person.
The group discussed strategies: preparing thoroughly (Elizabeth and Shane), improvising with bullet points (Chris), and the benefit of pairing up to speak (Mike and Chris’s planed joint talk).
Elizabeth reminded Mike that audiences are always rooting for the speaker — and encouraged him to keep pushing through the discomfort.
Chris mentioned Merge PHP (online conference, 14th May) as a useful middle step between podcasting and live in-person talks.
PHP Appalachia — A Community Origin Story
Elizabeth shared the story of PHP Appalachia, one of the earliest informal PHP community gatherings, held in the Gatlinburg, Tennessee area starting around 2006. Around 12 people from the PHP IRC channel (phpC) rented a cabin with Wi-Fi, gave talks, and sat around a campfire — and Elizabeth is still friends with every single person who attended.
Links & Resources
PHP Foundation
The Executive Director’s Manifesto — Chris’s article on PHP Architect, based on Elizabeth’s previous episode (free to read)
Merge PHP — Online PHP conference, 14th May (Andy Snell: “More than just a cache, data-structured databases”)
PHP Tech Conference — Coming up in a few weeks, running alongside JS Tech for the first time
PHP Architect Magazine — Use code ALIVE3 for the first 3 months of a digital annual subscription free
PHP Architect Store — T-shirts, caps, mugs and more
PHP Architect Discord — Join the community, ask questions, and chat with PHP core contributors
PHP Architect Social Media
X: https://x.com/phparch
Mastodon: https://phparch.social/@phparch
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/phparch.com
PHPArch.me: https://phparch.me/@phparch
Discord: https://discord.phparch.com
Partner
This podcast is made a little better thanks to our partner.
Displace
Infrastructure Management, Simplified. Automate Kubernetes deployments across any cloud provider or bare metal with a single command. Deploy, manage, and scale your infrastructure with ease — without the steep learning curve of Docker, Kubernetes, and Terraform. Perfect for solo developers and small teams who want enterprise-grade infrastructure without the enterprise-grade complexity.
https://displace.tech/
Music Provided by Epidemic Sound
The post PHP Alive And Kicking: Episode 29 Elizabeth Barron appeared first on PHP Architect.
1 hr 17 min
April 29Community Corner: Storyblok with Daniel Mendoza

In this episode, Scott talks Storyblok with Daniel Mendoza and his talk on using AI to help developers learn new technology that he will be presenting at JStek 2026.
Links:
Our Discord – https://discord.gg/aMTxunVx
Buy our shirts – https://store.phparch.com/products/community-corner-podcast-t-shirt
Daniel’s Links:
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-mendoza-503396152/
Personal Site – https://danieljmendoza.com/
Scott’s Links:
Website – https://scott.keck-warren.com/
Bluesky – https://bsky.app/profile/scottkeckwarren.bsky.social
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-keck-warren-91689810/
Mastodon – https://phpc.social/@scottkeckwarren
PHP Architect Social Media:
X: https://x.com/phparch
Mastodon: https://phparch.social/@phparch
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/phparch.com
Discord: https://discord.phparch.com
Subscribe to our magazine: https://www.phparch.com/subscribe/
Partners
This podcast is made a little better thanks to our partners.
Displace
Infrastructure Management, Simplified
Automate Kubernetes deployments across any cloud provider or bare metal with a single command. Deploy, manage, and scale your infrastructure with ease.
https://displace.tech/
PHPScore
Put Your Technical Debt on Autopay with PHPScore
https://phpscore.com/
CodeRabit
CodeRabbit – Cut code review time & bugs in half instantly with CodeRabbit.
https://www.coderabbit.ai/
Music Provided by Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/
#phpc #php #communityCornerPodcast #podcast #phptek #jstek
The post Community Corner: Storyblok with Daniel Mendoza appeared first on PHP Architect.
22 min
April 24The PHP Podcast 2026.04.23
 
 
PHP Podcast – April 23, 2026
Hosts: Eric Van Johnson & John
Duration: ~1 hour 10 minutes
Episode Summary
Eric and John return to the podcast after a few weeks away, discussing everything from Disneyland trips and bowling tournaments to EAV database nightmares, editor wars (Vim vs. PHPStorm), AI coding tools, and the state of in-person PHP community events.
Thank You to Our Sponsor
Displace Technologies – Building PHP applications is your passion. Managing cloud infrastructure shouldn’t be your headache.
Displace is your partner in cloud infrastructure orchestration, giving solo developers and small teams the tools and automation to deploy enterprise-grade Kubernetes clusters without the enterprise-grade complexity or cost.
Get started at displace.tech
Show Notes & Timestamps
[00:00] Welcome Back – Eric and John return after Joe, Sarah, and Sammy filled in last week
[02:45] Technical Difficulties – Eric’s streaming setup continues to cause problems
[04:30] PHP Architect Consulting – Reminder that PHP Architect does real-world consulting work (augment teams or full team)
[06:15] PHP Tek Countdown – 26 days away! Less than 4 weeks
[08:30] John’s Disneyland Trip – Family spring break trip with a clever 3-day pass hack
[12:00] Bowling Tournament – John competed in Reno for U.S. Championship (singles: 1,963rd, doubles: 2,599th, team: 607th)
[14:00] Joe Ferguson News – Congratulations to Joe on becoming PHP Release Manager!
[16:30] EAV Database Nightmare – John’s journey removing Entity-Attribute-Value system after 10+ years (running out of bigint IDs)
[28:00] Editor Wars: Vim vs. PHPStorm – Eric’s return to NeoVim after trying VS Code. Discussion of keybindings, speed, and muscle memory
[38:00] AI Coding Tools – Using Claude Code with subagents (front-end, back-end, database, QA). Discussion of productivity gains and QA bottlenecks
[46:00] Docker Sandbox for Claude – John explains running Claude in Docker sandbox mode for project isolation
[52:00] PHP Tek Mobile App – Holly (listener/mobile dev) offered to build an attendee app with wallet pass integration
[56:30] Trailer Disaster Averted – Holly got trailer tires changed just before record flooding at the storage location
[01:01:00] PHP Verse 2026 – JetBrains virtual event. Discussion of value of in-person vs. virtual conferences
[01:08:00] Bitwarden CLI Security Alert – Trojan horse in version 2026.4.0 (credential stealer). Verify your installation!
[01:13:00] Security & AI – Discussion of supply chain attacks, npm pre-install hooks, and risks of AI-generated code without review
Links Mentioned
Displace Technologies – Episode sponsor
PHP Podcast Discord
PHP Architect on YouTube
PHP Architect – Consulting & Magazine
PHP Tek 2026 – 26 days away!
PHP Verse 2026 – JetBrains virtual event
SessionEye – Conference schedule management
Quotes
“I’m still coding but I’m not doing like a full end-to-end coding anymore… I don’t know if I need PHPStorm anymore.”
– Eric on how AI tools have changed his workflow
“It’s like you go away on vacation and you have a great time… but you come home and you lay down in your bed and you’re like, ‘Oh wait, this feels better.'”
– Eric describing his return to Vim
“I’m embracing these early adopters of ‘we don’t need developers anymore, we have AI’ because I’m charging them a lot of money here in a couple of years.”
– Eric on fixing AI-generated code
Host:
Eric Van Johnson
X: @shocm
Mastodon: @[email protected]
Bluesky: @ericvanjohnson.bsky.social
PHPArch.me: @eric
John Congdon
X: @johncongdon
Mastodon: @[email protected]
Bluesky: @johncongdon.bsky.social
PHPArch.me: @john
Streams:
Youtube Channel
Twitch
Connect & Hire
PHP Architect Website
Twitter/X
Mastodon
Hire PHP Developers
Looking to hire PHP developers? Email [email protected] – Joe and the team are available for consulting, infrastructure work, Ansible playbooks, and code review.
Partner
This podcast is made a little better thanks to our partners
Displace

Infrastructure Management, Simplified
Automate Kubernetes deployments across any cloud provider or bare metal with a single command. Deploy, manage, and scale your infrastructure with ease.
https://displace.tech/

PHPScore
Put Your Technical Debt on Autopay with PHPScore

CodeRabbit

Cut code review time & bugs in half instantly with CodeRabbit.

Music Provided by Epidemic Sound
https://www.epidemicsound.com/
Next Episode
Join us next week for more PHP news, tech talk, and community updates. See you at PHP Tek!
Got feedback? Join us on Discord at discord.phparch.com
The post The PHP Podcast 2026.04.23 appeared first on PHP Architect.
1 hr 11 min
April 22Community Corner: The AI Refactor with Kumuda Sreenivasa

In this episode, Scott talks Kumuda Sreenivasa about her talk on using AI to help with refactoring/replacing legacy system that she’s be presenting at JStek 2026.
Links:
Our Discord – https://discord.gg/aMTxunVx
Buy our shirts – https://store.phparch.com/products/community-corner-podcast-t-shirt
Kumuda’s Links:
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/kumudas/
Scott’s Links:
Website – https://scott.keck-warren.com/
Bluesky – https://bsky.app/profile/scottkeckwarren.bsky.social
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-keck-warren-91689810/
Mastodon – https://phpc.social/@scottkeckwarren
PHP Architect Social Media:
X: https://x.com/phparch
Mastodon: https://phparch.social/@phparch
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/phparch.com
Discord: https://discord.phparch.com
Subscribe to our magazine: https://www.phparch.com/subscribe/
Partners
This podcast is made a little better thanks to our partners.
Displace
Infrastructure Management, Simplified
Automate Kubernetes deployments across any cloud provider or bare metal with a single command. Deploy, manage, and scale your infrastructure with ease.
https://displace.tech/
PHPScore
Put Your Technical Debt on Autopay with PHPScore
https://phpscore.com/
CodeRabit
CodeRabbit – Cut code review time & bugs in half instantly with CodeRabbit.
https://www.coderabbit.ai/
Music Provided by Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/
#phpc #php #communityCornerPodcast #podcast #phptek
The post Community Corner: The AI Refactor with Kumuda Sreenivasa appeared first on PHP Architect.
12 min
April 17PHP Alive And Kicking: Episode 22 Sara Golemon

Sara Golemon returns to the show — her first appearance was way back in Episode 2 — for a deep dive into Git Worktrees, a powerful but underused Git feature that lets you work on multiple branches simultaneously without the overhead of stashing, context-switching, or rebuilding from scratch. The episode covers practical real-world use cases, a live demo on the PHP source repo, Docker/Lando integration, and some lively chat about AI, scripting, and developer productivity.
Topics Covered
Git Worktrees Main Topic
Rather than switching between branches and losing build state, Git Worktrees let you check out multiple branches into separate directories — all sharing a single .git history.
How Worktrees differ from standard git checkout branch switching
Why they shine for projects with build artifacts (compiled code, minified JS) — no recompile on directory switch
Working with PHP’s multi-version release branches (8.1 → 8.2 → 8.3 → 8.4 → 8.5 → master) simultaneously
Merging a fix up through all active PHP release branches in a live demo
Pushing all branches at once from a single shared .git directory
Cleaning up with git worktree prune — just deleting the folder isn’t enough!
git worktree add
git worktree list
git worktree prune
git branch -d # Only works after pruning
Worktrees + Docker / Web Development
The hosts explored how Worktrees fit into a typical PHP web dev workflow with Docker.
Run multiple Docker Compose environments simultaneously — one per Worktree/branch
Port clashing is real; solutions include scripted aliases and Lando (handles conflicts automatically)
Sara’s Git alias new from Facebook/Meta automated Worktree creation and assigned unique IPs per ticket
composer install only needs to run once per Worktree — not on every branch switch
PHP Architect Social Media:
X: https://x.com/phparch
Mastodon: https://phparch.social/@phparch
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/phparch.com
PHPArch.me: https://phparch.me/@phparch
Discord: https://discord.phparch.com
Subscribe to our magazine: https://www.phparch.com/subscribe/

Partner
This podcast is made a little better thanks to our partners
Displace

Infrastructure Management, Simplified
Automate Kubernetes deployments across any cloud provider or bare metal with a single command. Deploy, manage, and scale your infrastructure with ease.
https://displace.tech/

PHPScore
Put Your Technical Debt on Autopay with PHPScore

CodeRabbit

Cut code review time & bugs in half instantly with CodeRabbit.

Music Provided by Epidemic Sound
https://www.epidemicsound.com/
The post PHP Alive And Kicking: Episode 22 Sara Golemon appeared first on PHP Architect.
1 hr 3 min
April 17The PHP Podcast 2026.04.16 with Sara, Joe, and Sami
 
 
The PHP Podcast streams live, typically every Thursday at 3 PM PT. Come join us and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Another fun episode of the PHP Podcast! Here’s what we covered:
Sammy Powers Returns! – After 4 years away from the PHP community, Sammy joins us from Germany where he’s working on immigration and building quantum trade schools
Quantum Computing & PHP – Deep dive into quantum technology, post-quantum cryptography, and why PHP developers should care about SHA-3 and quantum-safe algorithms
Joe Ferguson Named PHP 8.6 Release Manager – Congratulations to Joe on being selected alongside Matteo Beccati and Daniel Scherzer for the 8.6 release team
PHP Foundation Updates – Elizabeth Barron’s new blog post summarizing community outreach and the Foundation’s direction
PHP Tek 2026 – Coming up in Chicago at the Sheraton O’Hare
PHP Day Verona – May 14-16 in Italy
PHP Roundtable Memories – Nostalgia about the show’s history and vision for community-driven episodes
CodeRabbit Sponsorship – AI-powered code reviews for your pull requests
Links from the show:
The PHP Podcast 2026.04.16 with Sara, Joe, and Sammy
CodeRabbit – AI Code Review Co-pilot
PHP Foundation Blog – Elizabeth Barron’s Community Outreach Summary
Subscribe to PHP Architect Magazine
externals.io – PHP RFCs and Release Manager Announcements
PHP Architect YouTube Channel
PHP Tek 2026 – Chicago
PHP Day 2026 – Verona, Italy (May 14-16)
PHP Architect on Mastodon
PHP Architect on Bluesky
PHP Architect Discord
X: https://x.com/phparch
Mastodon: https://phparch.social/@phparch
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/phparch.com
Discord: https://discord.phparch.com
PHPArch.me: https://phparch.me/@phparch
Merch: https://store.phparch.com
Subscribe to our magazine: https://www.phparch.com/subscribe/
Host:
Eric Van Johnson
X: @shocm
Mastodon: @[email protected]
Bluesky: @ericvanjohnson.bsky.social
PHPArch.me: @eric
John Congdon
X: @johncongdon
Mastodon: @[email protected]
Bluesky: @johncongdon.bsky.social
PHPArch.me: @john
Streams:
Youtube Channel
Twitch
Connect & Hire
PHP Architect Website
Twitter/X
Mastodon
Hire PHP Developers
Looking to hire PHP developers? Email [email protected] – Joe and the team are available for consulting, infrastructure work, Ansible playbooks, and code review.
Partner
This podcast is made a little better thanks to our partners
Displace

Infrastructure Management, Simplified
Automate Kubernetes deployments across any cloud provider or bare metal with a single command. Deploy, manage, and scale your infrastructure with ease.
https://displace.tech/

PHPScore
Put Your Technical Debt on Autopay with PHPScore

CodeRabbit

Cut code review time & bugs in half instantly with CodeRabbit.

Music Provided by Epidemic Sound
https://www.epidemicsound.com/
The post The PHP Podcast 2026.04.16 with Sara, Joe, and Sami appeared first on PHP Architect.
1 hr