Can anyone help me improve my PHP skills?

[samoi]

Hello guys,

 

I'm sorry if the topic was not understandable, but I have a question for everyone will pass through this topic.

 

How did you learn the PHP?

 

and what's your advice for a beginner PHP?

 

and what do you suggest me to learn PHP? (please don't say PHP manual, I'm sick of it)

 

 

I hope my topic won't bother you. 

[ratcateme]

i self taught my self by going through the tutorial on http://tizag.com/ both the PHP and MySQL one

then i set my self the task of building a large web application.

i found it to be not that hard AND i USED the PHP MANUAL ALL THE TIME it is your best tool as a developer!!!!

also i would recommend getting and IDE with syntax highlighting and if possiable error highlighting(i use PHP Designer 2008)

but if you are good at learning from books i would say get your self a book and look through it.

i know heaps of people who have learned PHP just fine from books.

 

Scott.

[MasterACE14]

I personally learnt PHP from books. My favourite one being "PHP5 in easy steps" , it was a really great book, and I use notepad++ which is free to download.

 

And I've also learnt from Tizag.com and the PHP Manual. Using everything myself and ratcateme have mentioned, you really can't go wrong.

 

Regards ACE

[Michdd]

I would also suggest the tutorials on http://tizag.com and Notebook++

[htzone]

I learned PHP from a book as well (PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Web Sites by Larry Ullman), but didn't fully comprehend a lot of it until I started to put concepts into actual code. It helps if you have a couple ideas for small scripts that you'd like to write. Don't try and do anything too crazy at first, keep your projects small to begin with, and you'll soon find that your knowledge is building upon itself.

 

I would recommend that you invest in a PHP book, because you'll want to use it as a reference, and these type of books tend to explore the concepts behind common PHP techniques and functions and present the information in a way that's easier to understand than if you got it from PHP.net. PHP.net is an incredibly value resource however which I still use on a near-daily basis.

 

For writing scripts I use Crimson Editor, which is free and offers syntax highlighting for PHP and many other programming, scripting, and markup languages.

[Mchl]

I just got project to be made in PHP and had to learn it to complete it. PHP Manual? Get used to it. It actually is a very good resource (compared to some others manuals I've seen) and I'll bet most PHP users use it everyday. Same goes for MySQL manual if you're building a MySQL based app.

 

One thing I benefited from is that I had a very good course in programming in my secondary school. It was Pascal mostly, which is way different from PHP, but it gave some understanding of programming concepts.