1. Lithium: The Definitive Guide

So you're interested in writing tight apps with the latest RAD techniques? Welcome to Lithium, the most RAD framework for PHP.

This set of guides is meant for PHP developers trying to get a handle on what Lithium can do, and—more importantly—what it can do for _you_. This set of guides is meant to give you a world-class tour of the Lithium framework. You'll learn how Lithium implements and you can leverage MVC, data access, authentication, authorization, validation, internationalization, layouts, unit testing and more. In short, you'll learn all about Rapid Application Development, Lithium style.

Enough talk. Let's get started.

1. 1. Contributing

This project is an ongoing work, and we need your help. Lithium users _new_ and _old_ are welcome and encouraged to join in the fun. If you've struggled with something, help us record and share the solution so others can find the way more easily. There are many ways you can help:

 * Code examples to enrich current documentation
 * Do lists or tables to help explain concepts
 * Rough notes that describe an oft-used process
 * Corrections (typos, inaccuracies, etc.)
 * Translations

If you'd like to help, simply [fork](https://github.com/UnionOfRAD/manual), [open](https://github.com/UnionOfRAD/manual/issues), or get in contact with one of the core team members. You can give us a shout in channel #li3 on server Freenode, or send an email to anderson.johnd at gmail dot com.