Lessons Learned from Beginning PHP 5.3

Earlier this summer Wrox came under a lot of heat from the PHP community for jumping the gun and prematurely releasing some PHP 6.0 books. There was a very articulate blog review pointing out what a bad move this was, given that PHP 6.0 isn't even in beta.

After reading this and having a lot of discussions with authors, readers, and others on twitter and blogs, we had the chance to avoid repeating history in what eventually became the recently released Beginning PHP 5.3.Originally the plan for pulling the book back (it was shipping to the printer) was to rewrite the whole book for 5.3 and make any 6.0 coverage an "optional preview." After discussing that further the author (Matt Doyle) and our advisors came to the conclusion that for the "Beginning" audience, an optional preview of a totally unreleased new version wasn't a good idea.

So where did that leave us? I'm happy to say that all of this brings us to what I hope is a really great book for PHP Beginners and as far as I know, the only book available on the release of PHP 5.3 released July 1, 2009. PHP.NET describes PHP 5.3 as "...a major improvement in the 5.X series, which includes a large number of new features and bug fixes."

I'd like to take this time to thank everyone who called us out for the early 6.0 books, thank Matt for sticking with the rewrite back to 5.3, and everyone else who helped. I'd like to also ask that when you see something you'd like to improve in Wrox books, you tell us. We try to make it easy to get in touch with us. We have the p2p.wrox.com forums, we're on Twitter @wrox, and you can find us on FaceBook . We'd love to hear from you.