nubby Posted July 4, 2008 Share Posted July 4, 2008 Hello all, Well I know a good amount of xHTML/Javascript/CSS but I am feeling like I am being held back not knowing PHP/MySQL. So now I want to take the step out of my little box and learn as much as I can since I plan on majoring in Computer Science, in 2 years, and love web design and I believe knowing as much as I can now will only help me more down the road. I have had Ubuntu for awhile and originally I didn't get it just for developing, but due to Windows problems that became I made the switch to Linux. I recently installed XAMPP Control Panel, but do not know if I did it correctly or if I am forgetting anything to install. Although trying to set-up PHP and MySQL on my Ubuntu machine would be nice I will make a thread in the Linux section if help is needed or if anyone wants to help me now it would be great. Before I try and set-up XAMPP for Ubuntu I feel I should at least start learning PHP/MySQL and getting my feet wet first. I already have hosting for my sites so I can just upload files to test through that although it is a bit slow. I was wondering what is the best way to get started? Read a book? What books are recommended? Save the money and read tutorials online? What sites are recommended? Should I learn PHP4 or PHP5? My hosting supports PHP5 and from what I tell PHP5 seems to be more popular now. Sorry if the questions or this post seem overwhelming, but I want to start expanding my knowledge of programming languages. Like I said I know xHTML/Javascript/CSS, but few months ago started to read up on C a little bit but didn't take it anywhere. Any help and or advice to a beginner would be appreciated! Edit: When I start up XAMPP and go to http://localhost.com/ I get this page http://localhost/xampp/splash.php . Does this mean I have it set-up correctly? How can I test/view my files? As in how do I navigate to them or see what folder I put them in? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeanWhitehouse Posted July 4, 2008 Share Posted July 4, 2008 i advise learning from, w3schools and tizag, save the money as the books may be out of date, compared to the stuff on the net. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ionik Posted July 4, 2008 Share Posted July 4, 2008 PHP 5 Online tutorials are a great place to start. Once you do that download some scripts and see how they work. Once you are comfortable buy a few books do some research on them before you do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nubby Posted July 4, 2008 Author Share Posted July 4, 2008 i advise learning from, w3schools and tizag, save the money as the books may be out of date, compared to the stuff on the net. Yeah I started on w3schools the other day. I will check out tizag, thanks. PHP 5 Online tutorials are a great place to start. Once you do that download some scripts and see how they work. Once you are comfortable buy a few books do some research on them before you do. Yeah I have already downloaded some scripts that I use on my sites. I take a look at them and it seems fairly understandable, but I still need help on it. As for books I was going to buy off half.com where they are super cheap, but most that had good reviews are outdated and PHP4 books. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ionik Posted July 5, 2008 Share Posted July 5, 2008 search google for php books spend some time looking for one before you choose to buy it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nubby Posted July 5, 2008 Author Share Posted July 5, 2008 search google for php books spend some time looking for one before you choose to buy it yeah I also use books.google.com to see a book before I buy. But a side note: I got XAMPP working and everything and love it so much more than uploading my files via ftp to my hosting. Now time to start reading tutorials. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trq Posted July 5, 2008 Share Posted July 5, 2008 Theres a great link in my signiture. I think most of the stuff on w3schools is pretty dated really. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lodius2000 Posted July 5, 2008 Share Posted July 5, 2008 learning php 5 (o'reilly) each chapter has exercises kind of like quizzes at the end so you can apply all the really dry programming mumbo jumbo you just read, its pretty good stuff, 1 vice, it introduces pear db, which is out of date, for its mysql handler, rather than using php's built in mysql functions, good news is, pear's object names look similar to mysql functions, so translating shouldnt be too much of a problem, wasnt for me aside from html, and css, php is my first real programming language and thanks to this book, and this forum i have built a blog style cms Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PC Nerd Posted July 5, 2008 Share Posted July 5, 2008 although books can be outdated - PHP5 for dummies i bought ( ages) ago, and although its going to be partially out of date when php6 is released, its fantastic for easily being able to flick back to the argument list for all the string formatting functions - or timestamp issues... or even things like OOP syntax etc. sure books get out dated, but their fantastic for learning a langauge - even if you never use it later, invest in teh $40 or $50 and get a good php books. gdlk. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wildteen88 Posted July 5, 2008 Share Posted July 5, 2008 Edit: When I start up XAMPP and go to http://localhost.com/ I get this page http://localhost/xampp/splash.php . Does this mean I have it set-up correctly? How can I test/view my files? As in how do I navigate to them or see what folder I put them in? Yes you have installed XAMPP fine. You place all your files in /opt/lampp/htdocs for linux installations. Read here for locating other files/directories too. XAMPP has a redirection script (I thing its called index.html) located in /opt/lampp/htdocs which will redirect you to xampp/splash.php when you access http://localhost If you want you can remove this script (clear your browsers cache afterwards though). To run your script you go to http://localhost/scriptname.php Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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