At reality creations we've just recently moved onto PHP5, the latest major revision change to "Personal Home Pages" or as revisionist history would have it "the PHP Hypertext Preprocessor".

For those people who've found this article without knowing about PHP, it's an open source scripting language commonly used to provide interactive features in websites. In July 04 it progressed onto its 5th version adding a slew of new technical features. So far its been very plain sailing, a slightly different setup, a few refinements to object functions, a slight speed increase. Of course we've only barely scratched the surface so far, we mainly have php4 code running happily on php5 with a smattering of php5 functionality.

Now of course the more interesting issue here is why a web technology company, surely a dynamic forward thinking enterprise, is confessing to taking nearly a year and a quarter to adopt new technology ?

The answer is because we are "forward thinking", a statement which, when stripped of any buzzword cliches, means we are capable of planning. One year after it initial release is the optimum time to exploit the benefits of php5. As a technology it has now had over a years worth of real life testing, the problems plaguing early adopters have been dealt with. It is now a product mature enough for serious commercial use, while still offering sufficient new features and approaches that it gives obvious advantage for a client.

PHP5 is allowing us to use new and exciting technological approaches to our clients programs such as interactive real time AJAX techniques. It now adds value to our service not idle buzzwords. At reality creations we follow a program of responsible change to give the best service to our clients, we believe now is the time for PHP5!