Bitnami Open Source Leaders Interview Series: Matthew Weier O’Phinney for the Zend Framework Project

We recently interviewed Matthew Weier O’Phinney, technical lead for the Zend Framework Project. Zend Framework, a product of Zend Technologies, is an open source web framework implemented in PHP 5. Zend Technologies was founded by two Israeli college students with a love for the PHP language. From humble beginnings to becoming a leading provider of products and services for developers around the world, learn about Zend's history and their aspirations for the future.

Listen and Learn:

• How Zend was originally envisioned 
• Zend Framework's competitors and what they're doing 'right' 
• Predictions surrounding the introduction of Middleware 
• Zend Framework's scalability and relationship with different environments 
• Various release strategies over time 
• How to take part in the community and become a contributor

Interested in learning more about open source frameworks options? Visit our stacks page for available apps and what's in the pipeline!

Stuart Langridge:       These are the Bitnami Open Source Leaders Series of Interviews.  I'm Stuart Langridge, and I'm talking to Matthew Weier O'Phinney, who is technical lead for the Zend Framework Project.  So, the obvious question to start out with here is, who is Zend, and what's the Zend Framework?

Django 1.5 beta: GeoDjango support for PostGIS 2.0. Now all-in-one with BitNami.

The Django development team has recently released the first beta of the upcoming major version of the framework, Django 1.5. At BitNami, one of our goals is to simplify the testing of the latest versions of open source web applications and language runtimes. We are happy to announce that we have just also released our first BitNami DjangoStack with 1.5. It is completely self-contained and it will not conflict with your current development environment. You can download it, give a try and safely remove it when you are done.

Django is a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design. If you are not familiar already with BitNami DjangoStack, it is a free packaging offering that simplifies the development and deployment of Django and Python applications.This version includes ready-to-run versions of Apache 2.2 with mod_wsgi 3.3, SQLite 3.7, MySQL 5.5, PostgreSQL 9.2 with PostGIS 2.0 (only of Linux and Mac OS X), Python 2.7 and Django 1.5. It can be deployed using all-in-one free native installers (for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows), virtual machines and Amazon Cloud Images.

The biggest new feature in Django 1.5 is the configurable User model. You can check the release notes for this version here.

Another important new feature is that GeoDjango now supports PostGIS 2.0, which is already bundled in the BitNami DjangoStack. GeoDjango makes it simple to create geographic Web applications, like location-based services. You can now check our GeoDjango Quickstart guide for details on how to use GeoDjango with PostGIS 2.0 on BitNami DjangoStack.

As a reminder, our bi-weekly contest is now open to Python web applications. If there is any application that you would like to see added to the BitNami Library visit our contest page. You can vote for the applications in our contest or also summit new applications.

New BitNami PHP 5.4 xAMP stacks

We are happy to announce that all of the BitNami PHP-based development stacks have been updated to include PHP 5.4, Apache 2.4 and PostgreSQL 9.2 support. 

You can download LAMP stack for Linux, MAMP stack for OS X and WAMP stack for Windows to develop PHP-based applications on your Desktop, using your favorite Operating System. There are also virtual machines available for download and cloud images to deploy them on Amazon EC2 directly. They ship the following main components:

• PHP 5.4.8
• Apache 2.4.3
• MySQL 5.5.21
• phpMyAdmin 3.5.3
• Optional frameworks:
• ZendFramework 2.0.3
• CodeIgniter 2.1.3
• Symfony 2.1.3
• CakePHP 2.2.3
• Smarty 3.1.12
• Laravel 3.2.11

We have also upgraded the PostgreSQL based stacks to the the latest stable version, PostgreSQL 9.2.0. Because the LAPP, MAPP and WAPP stacks are available as native installers, virtual machine images and AMIs, you can develop on a local machine natively or in a virtual environment and then deploy the application to Amazon EC2 for testing and production.

BitNami has a popular module-based system. You can easily install additional BitNami applications on top of the LAMP, MAMP and WAMP stacks. Check our documentation to know how to add WordPress, Joomla!, Drupal, SugarCRM and other popular apps on top of these stacks.

BitNami PHP-based modules for LAMP, MAMP and WAMP stacks

BitNami LAMP Stacks now include popular PHP frameworks

Our goal at BitNami is to simplify the creation and deployment of web applications. Most developers do not start their projects from scratch, but rather build on top of existing libraries and applications like Drupal or Joomla!. We are happy to announce that the latest versions of our BitNami PHP platform stacks (LAMP, MAMP, WAMP, LAPP, MAPP and WAPP) now bundle four popular development frameworks. These stacks are available as downloadable native installers,  virtual appliances and cloud images.


This is the list of PHP frameworks and versions that we are including:

• ZendFramework 1.11.11
• Symfony 2.0.6
• CodeIgniter 2.1.0
• CakePHP 2.0.4

If you have additional suggestions for other frameworks we should be adding, please let us know!

You can find a quick guide about how to start your first project using one of these frameworks at http://wiki.bitnami.org/Components/Frameworks.