[29-Jun-2003] The PHP development community is proud to announce the release of PHP 5 Beta 1. Both source packages, and a Windows build are available in the Downloads Section. A list of changes can be found in the ChangeLog file.

They do note that it is a beta version and not to replace your existing PHP 4 installs yet

Ooh, aah. They fix OO, yet leave the rest of the language an everything-in-the-core mess. Bleh.

Perl forevah!

Yeah!

heheh Thanks Ron

they're up to beta 4 now and it's supposed to be the last beta

changelog: http://www.php.net/ChangeLog-5.php#5.0.0b4

I donno charles, I like perl and all, but there are just somethings in PHP that are pretty fun none the less ...

PHP 5 final is out!

Finally!

PHP 5.0.1 Released!
[12-Aug-2004] The PHP Development Team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 5.0.1 . This is a maintenance release that in addition to many non-critical bug fixes also includes new UNIX and Windows installation docs which are now auto-generated from the PHP Manual.

For changes since PHP 5.0.0, please consult the ChangeLog .

PHP 5.0.2 Released!

[23-Sep-2004] The PHP Development Team is proud to announce the immediate release of PHP 5.0.2 . This is a maintenance release that in addition to many non-critical bug fixes, addresses a problem with GPC input processing. All Users of PHP 5 are encouraged to upgrade to this release as soon as possible.

For changes since PHP 5.0.1, please consult the ChangeLog .

bah... this php thing is like a desktop software instead of a language too many fixes in a short range of time... and many incompatibilities with older versions

PHP 4.4.0 Released

[11-Jul-2005] The PHP Development Team would like to announce the immediate release of PHP 4.4.0 . This is a maintenance release that addresses a serious memory corruption problem within PHP concerning references. If references were used in a wrong way, PHP would often create memory corruptions which would not always surface and be visible. The increased middle digit was required because the fix that corrected the problem with references changed PHP's internal API. PHP 4.4.0 does not have any new features, and is solely a bugfix release.

PHP 5.1 Beta 2 Available

[23-Jun-2005] PHP 5.1 Beta 2 is now available! A lot of work has been put into this upcoming release and we believe it is ready for public testing.

Some of the key improvements of PHP 5.1 include:

• PDO (PHP Data Objects) - A new native database abstraction layer providing performance, ease-of-use, and flexibility.
• Significantly improved language performance mainly due to the new Zend Engine II execution architecture.
• The PCRE extension has been updated to PCRE 5.0.
• Many more improvements including lots of new functionality & many bug fixes, especially in regards to SOAP, streams and SPL.

See the bundled NEWS file for a more complete list of changes.

Everyone is encouraged to start playing with this beta, although it is not yet recommended for mission-critical production use.

PHP 5.0.4 Released

For changes in PHP 5.0.4 since PHP 5.0.3, please consult the PHP 5 ChangeLog.
http://www.php.net/ChangeLog-5.php

PHP 5.1.4 Released

[04-May-2006] A critical bug with $_POST array handling as well as the FastCGI sapi have been discovered in PHP 5.1.3. A new PHP release 5.1.4 is now available to address these issues. All PHP users are encouraged to upgrade to this release as soon as possible.

Further details about this release can be found in the release announcement and the full list of changes is available in the PHP 5 ChangeLog .
The tarballs were updated to include the PEAR's phar file, previously missing from the release.

PHP 4.4.4 and PHP 5.1.5 Released - http://www.php.net/downloads.php

[17-Aug-2006] The PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 5.1.5 and 4.4.4. These two releases address a series of security problems that were discovered since the release of PHP 5.1.4 and 4.4.3. The new releases include the following changes:

• Added missing safe_mode/open_basedir checks inside the error_log(), file_exists(), imap_open() and imap_reopen() functions.
• Fixed overflows inside str_repeat() and wordwrap() functions on 64bit systems.
• Fixed possible open_basedir/safe_mode bypass in cURL extension and on PHP 5.1.5 with realpath cache.
• Fixed overflow in GD extension on invalid GIF images.
• Fixed a buffer overflow inside sscanf() function.
• Fixed an out of bounds read inside stripos() function.
• Fixed memory_limit restriction on 64 bit system.

Further details about this release can be found in the release announcements (5.1.5 and 4.4.4), and the full list of changes is available in the ChangeLogs (PHP 4, PHP 5).

http://www.php.net/ChangeLog-4.php#4.4.4
http://www.php.net/ChangeLog-5.php#5.1.5

PHP 5.1.6 is already out

[24-Aug-2006] The PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 5.1.6. This release contains a fix for memory_limit restriction on 64 bit systems that was not included in PHP 5.1.5.

Change log:
Fixed memory_limit on 64bit systems. (Stefan E.)
Fixed bug #38488(Access to "php://stdin" and family crashes PHP on win32). (Dmitry)

If you are lucky enough to run a Debian 3.1 based server, you might want to add the DotDeb.org apt repository in /etc/apt/source.list:
deb http://packages.dotdeb.org stable all
deb-src http://packages.dotdeb.org stable all

It took me only 5 seconds to upgrade the PHP version on my server over DotDeb

PHP6 will break many many scripts out there. Register Globals will no longer be an option, Thank God! Also Safe mode is rummored to be taken out. It is kind of funny. If you used best coding pratices al along, you should be fine, but... If you didn't. Well we shall see.

I am waiting for the Hosting companies to start upgrading MySQL to 5. They really seem to be lagging there. I took a class from MySQL on it.

Stored procedures,Triggers, Archive tables, views... Its like a real modern database now. The archive table I am betting will be miss used by most. In class we too a 200 meg myisam table and queried all data from it to store in a archive table. 10 meg is all it took up. But, it is not meant to query but once in a great while.

PHP 5 made some huge strides forward in 5. Security became a bigger focus, OOP is much better, mysqli(can be used in 4 too) is freaking awsome.

Perl I still a very viable language and on almost every web development companies list of requirements for new hires. It is loosing ground on the web, but this is only because as others have moved into OOP, AJAX, XML, DOM Perl is still in Perl 5. I know about CPAN, I know about mods. But Corperate execs do not. They only know it has been years since an update.

When 6 comes out, look for a growth again in the web, though I doubt it will ever recapture to total following it had in the mid to late 90's. It has competition now it didn't have then.

JSP, PHP, ASP, Ruby on Rails, Plain Ruby,

The field is a bit more vast now, but it will gain many back.

PHP 5.2.0 Released
[02-Nov-2006] The PHP development team is proud to announce the immediate release of PHP 5.2.0. This release is a major improvement in the 5.X series, which includes a large number of new features, bug fixes and security enhancements. Further details about this release can be found in the release announcement 5.2.0, the full list of changes is available in the ChangeLog PHP 5.

All users of PHP, especially those using earlier PHP 5 releases are advised to upgrade to this release as soon as possible. This release also obsoletes the 5.1 branch of PHP.

For users upgrading from PHP 5.0 and PHP 5.1 there is an upgrading guide available here, detailing the changes between those releases and PHP 5.2.0.

Lots (>180) of bugfixes this past week

http://devzone.zend.com/node/view/id/1673

lol i'm still on 5.1.6

FYI for all of you that I've forced CentOS on, the CentOS Extra's repo has MySQL 5.0.27-1 available