Author: Manuel Lemos
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Last month viewers: 5
Categories: New site features, Lately in PHP Podcast
Usually you resort to search engines or specific sites like PHP Classes or similar sites. The problem is you often find so many components that you would take you a long time to evaluate and determine which one is the best.
Now the PHP Classes site is launching a new feature that combines the accuracy of good developer advice with the speed of good search engines.
Read this article or watch a short tutorial video to learn how you can now quickly find the best PHP packages recommended by other PHP developers.
Contents
Tutorial Video
Tutorial Video Audio MP3
The Problem of Finding Good PHP Packages
Good Developer Advice
Combining the Accuracy of Good Developer Advice with the Speed of Response of Search Engines
Getting New Types of Package Recommendations
Recommending Your Own Packages
Recommending Your Innovative Packages
Conclusion
Tutorial Video
Here follows the tutorial video presenting this new feature. If you prefer to just listen to the video audio, below you can find the audio player or a link to download it in the MP3 format.
The rest of the article is the transcript of the video with links to the respective sections of the site that implement the described features.
The video has sub-titles in English. You can activate the sub-titles and even change them to another language of choice by selecting the Auto-Translate option in the YouTube video player options wheel.
Tutorial Video Audio MP3
The Problem of Finding Good PHP Packages
Well, when you have to solve a programming problem, you often seek advice from other developers to find the best component that exists to solve that problem, so you can either use that component just like that or to take ideas on how that component solves your problem.
However, sometimes you are in a hurry and cannot find anybody qualified enough to give you an advice about existing components. Then you often search for the component on Google or use specific sites like PHP Classes.
The problem with that approach is that you often find many components of varied levels of quality, so it is not easy to determine which one of those components is the best for you.
Good Developer Advice
Now, PHP Classes provides you a better solution for that problem. In 2014 the site launched a package recommendation system. Users go there and describe their problems. Then a qualified developer can come and give advice about which component that exists on the site that could solve your problem.
This is great but sometimes it takes hours or days for another developer to come and give you some advice.
On the other hand, many times users have needs that other users already had in the past, so chances are that the advice you need was already given to another user before.
Combining the Accuracy of Good Developer Advice with the Speed of Response of Search Engines
Now PHP Classes makes it easy for you to find components advised by other users in the past.
It is easy. Just go on PHP Classes search page and enter some relevant keywords related with your problem.
The site will show you immediately existing package recommendations related with those keywords.
You can go on the recommendation pages and see the discussions that happened between the user looking for the advice and the developers that gave the recommendations.
Chances are that the original user problem is the same as yours. Hopefully the recommendations really address well your needs too.
In that case, just click on the recommended package links to know the recommended package better. There you can view the package code for instance, as well other types of information, as well download the package in several types of supported formats, or even install your package using the Composer tool directly from the PHP Classes Composer repository.
As you may know the PHP Classes site supports the Composer tool since 2013, so you can install any package from the PHP Classes site using that excellent tool.
Getting New Types of Package Recommendations
If for some reason you did not find a suitable package recommendation, you can post a more detailed recommendation request for a new package using the Request new recommendation link and then you can give all the details about your needs, detailing them as much as possible and after the request is submitted you need to wait a little bit until another developer can give you a good recommendation.
Recommending Your Own Packages
On the other hand, if you are a developer that wants to have greater exposure to your existing packages, you can also go on the site search page and recommend your packages to users that seek solutions for problems your packages solve.
Type some keywords in the search box. Then you can see all the recommendations so far on the User recommended tab. Go on each recommendation page and then use the Recommend package form to enter the package page and an explanation telling the user why that package that you have solves the user problem.
Recommending Your Innovative Packages
Furthermore, there is a section on which you find featured package recommendation requests. These are requests for which there was no package available on the site to solve the user problems.
If you submit a package that addresses a problem of a featured request, chances are that your package is innovative because there was no other solution before that could address that problem, and you qualify to be nominated to the Innovation Award, thus having the chance to earn more visibility to your package, and also earn prizes and public recognition.
Conclusion
Well, this is it. I am sure this feature will save you a lot time trying many packages that you could find in PHP Classes or similar sites.
So far over 400 package recommendation requests were posted on the site and new requests come every day, so you can find a suitable recommendation related with your needs.
Over time there will be more and more problems for which the site will have a good package recommendation to solve those problems, thus making the site more useful for you and to all developers that want to get more exposure to their packages.
If you liked this feature, or you have questions, or you suggestions to make it better, post a comment here.
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Comments:
1. Last update date in search index - dewa (2016-03-02 09:13)
To see last update of packages in search index and sort by it... - 2 replies
Read the whole comment and replies