PHP UK Conference 2025 Recap

This year, I had the pleasure of attending the PHP UK Conference again, for the first time since 2016, only this time as a sponsor under the banner of MyApps, our currently-in-development build and deployment tool, built on Katapult, Krystal’s Cloud Platform.

It was a great opportunity to not only showcase MyApps but to catch up with some old faces, see where the industry is heading, and learn about some exciting new technologies.

I can’t take any credit for the stand. The day wouldn’t have been possible without a lot of effort that went in by everyone involved who worked tirelessly to bring everything together. From arranging the standard with the organisers to creating all the marketing collateral, and 3D-printing a batch of Catapults (our fun little giveaway), they really nailed it, right down to the finer details. And of course, we had MyApps in a demoable state, ready to show off to anyone that might be interested.

I’d last visited The Brewery, in 2016 for the same conference, so it was a real blast from the past. While much has changed in the tech world, the venue’s timeless layout remains exactly as I’d remembered it, so it was nice to return to familiar surroundings that sparked so many memories.

During my last visit, I remember being inspired by a number of talks. Szymon Skórczyński’s presentation on Docker was particularly memorable. This was the first time I’d really seen Docker in action. Thomas Shone talking about Security Theatre, and having a compromise strategy. Jakub Zalas did an inspiring talk titled ‘Eating spaghetti with Symfony’, which I remember being a good primer for breaking down a monolithic application, and Matthias Noback talk about not always chasing what’s new and shiny, focusing instead on good foundational ideas that I still reflect on today.

This year, although I was keen to see some of the talks, our goal was really gathering feedback for MyApps and networking. We got some great feedback on MyApps and I had the chance to reconnect with old faces and new friends.

This journey began the day before the conference had even started, when I bumped into James Brooks, from Laravel/PHP Stoke at the Stoke train station coffee shop - our trains were delayed (of course). It was great to chat and learn about how his role was evolving at Laravel, a company that had grown from a team of 5 to 50 during his tenure.

It was nice to say hello to Graham Campball too, I’ve gotten to know him through PHP Stoke and have used a number of his Laravel packages (such as Lavavel Markdown).

Talks, BDD and Dan

20 years of BDD was the keynote this year, and this stood out for me because it was by Dan Terhorst-North, who’d created Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD) some 20 years ago. Dan’s someone I came across in around 2016, mostly by watching his various conference videos and a few interactions with on social media.

Over the years, his talks have had a huge impact on my thinking and my career, in immeasurable ways. His work has helped me communicate some complex concepts in simple and accessible ways, and I owe a huge amount of my understanding of software development practices to him, so it was great to hear him talk about his journey and how BDD evolved into a community-driven initiative.

It was great to see Dan again after many years. I was then really pleased when after his talk, I bumped into him while getting a coffee. They say never meet your heroes, but meeting Dan was more like catching up with an old friend. We talked about the journey that brought us here, our experiences starting and finishing projects, and his much-anticipated book - one that I hope (and encourage) he finishes soon!

When I spoke to a few other people about Dan at the conference, unprompted, they explained that they owe a lot of their career to Dan, a sentiment which I could only echo. If you haven’t seen any of Dan’s talks yet, I highly recommend you do - it might just change the way you think about software development, perhaps even your career.

Exploring Dagger and FrankenPHP

Another exciting part of the conference for me was learning about Dagger and FrankenPHP - two tools that are changing PHP app deployment.

Dagger was a completely new concept to me. I had the chance to catch up with Chris Riley, who gave me a live demo of Dagger’s PHP SDK. Dagger simplifies CI/CD pipelines, and Chris shared insights into how easy it is to work with. Given that MyApps, our deployment tool, was only handling Dockerfiles or Buildpacks for now, Dagger seemed like a promising option to explore for future updates. Its potential for streamlining PHP deployments, especially in containerised environments, made it an intriguing topic.

FrankenPHP, on the other hand, is an app server for PHP that sits on top of Caddy, merging the PHP interpreter into the Go web server. This means PHP apps no longer need to deal with separate web services like Apache or Nginx, or PHP-FPM; everything is handled in one service. Some of the superpowers that FrankenPHP brings to the table include: Worker mode, Native real-time capabilities for Laravel Broadcast, Resource preloading with HTTP 103 Early Hints, Automatic HTTPS, HTTP/2, and HTTP/3 support, Modern compression techniques, Prometheus metrics for monitoring.

Having just written build pipelines to deploy WordPress, Laravel, and Symfony apps using Docker, FrankenPHP and MyApps, I was especially excited to understand more about what it can do. It’s clear that this could be a game-changer for PHP developers looking to streamline their app deployments.

The Big Picture: PHP’s Future Looks Bright

Attending the conference was a great experience. The venue has remained largely unchanged since my last visit, I’m told it’s barely changed since 1750. In many ways, this mirrors the PHP community: a constant presence that has endured through the years, yet continually adapts and evolves to meet the needs of the times. It’s amazing to see how far PHP has come over the past decade.

With new technologies like FrankenPHP and Dagger, you can see how PHP continues to evolve, giving it a new edge, similar to the shift we saw with the release of PHP 7 almost a decade ago. It’s going to be interesting to see where PHP goes next.

I left the conference feeling inspired and optimistic for the future of PHP. If you’re a PHP developer, it’s a great time to be involved and I’m excited to see how the landscape changes over the next decade.