PHP Beginner

[Cermno1981]

Hello all,

 

I'm Craig, I'm 29 years old and reside in the wonderfully dull city of Nottingham in the UK. I'm a Business Analyst by profession and spend my day re-engineering requirements given to me by people who often don't actually know what they want!

 

I've decided to embark on a quest to learn PHP.

 

I was inspired by the creation of a PHP based web tool for monitoring games servers, and decided I would like to possess the skills to create such tools myself. I've tweaked with PHP in the past but I have merely fumbled my way through, having never really dived too deep into it.

 

I've already purchased a recommended title, "Beginning PHP and MYSQL" from Apress, but I'm finding the learning hard. I learn best from practical examples, writing the code out myself and then see the results. I'm not finding this book to be great for this, although as a reference book I can see how it would be invaluable. I'll be reading the stickies around the forums and looking around the site, but in the meantime I hope to not bother you lot too much with silly questions! (I'm sure I will)

 

Any pointers for a complete noob, gratefully received.

 

C

[Maq]

Hi and welcome

[chaseman]

I'm 25, started learning PHP at the beginning of this year (with no programming experience), and I'm already writing scripts.

 

If you keep at it you will understand the system behind PHP fairly quick, but it would take a while to program such server monitoring systems.

 

You can check out Head First PHP & MySQL, it's quite practical, teaches you how to do login, registration systems, how to deal with the mysql database, and similar things. It's a nice book for the first start, when you find the other technical books to overwhelming.

[Cermno1981]

Thanks for the welcomes.

 

I know the goal of server monitoring scripts is high, there's a big learning curve first.

 

I signed up to a cracking US based site called 'Lynda', which has masses of video courses. It's gonna cost me in the short term, but the courses have been fantastic. My learning style is to see, do and test, so I was struggling with the book.

 

I've covered so far variables, arrays, functions, logical operators, globals, constants, and a load of other stuff that never made sense before. Now when I look at some scripts I have, I find myself understanding.

 

The course I'm working through at the mo contains the planning and creation of a CMS. Useful for me as I really would not know where to start.

 

I'll look up that title suggested, every bit of help will be handy.

 

Cheers

 

C

[chaseman]

If you already covered all the basics, that book may not be of help, it's really for the very very beginners, kind of like playing with Lego before you go and deal with arrays.

 

It's a good book to get the first touch with PHP, everything beyond that should be gathered elsewhere.

[Cermno1981]

I'll avoid that book then.

 

I'm two thirds the way through the essentials course now and my brain is going to explode! That said, it's extremely satisfying to have created a page through which information can be created, read and updated. Now I only have 'D' left to do.

 

My first project is going to be small. I think I'll start by creating a personal blogging space, something I can practice what I've learned on.

 

I'm also a keen photography enthusiast, and the next course shows you how to create a photo gallery (uploading and manipulating the images). A great example for me as it kills two birds with one stone, I've been looking for a decent gallery and I'll get to practice my PHP/MYSQL at the same time.