Beginner PHP developer looking for suggestions

[Zintak]

Hi,
I'm a newbie at this (2nd year student of multimedia technologies) & we started to learn web development (past HTML and CSS). This is exciting to me & basically it's the only subject that i really like and it gives me motivation to give my 110% in each lecture.

Having said that, the first thing that came to my mind when studying web development is what's happening at the back end side. I've started my research on how to learn the actual aspects of databases. I came across a huge plethora of online courses paid and free, I don't want to pay for this stuff yet as I can barely manage my early student life as of now, so I want to ask, where did you first started learning PHP development? I've found some free interactive online courses on bitdegree about PHP. There are a lot of these courses out there & I don't know if this one is a good point to start learning from.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated. Thanks!

 

Edited September 21, 2018 by requinix
removing link

[ginerjm]

I think I have heard of several people having success with codeacademy for tutorials.  Can't really offer much more since I am a book learner and purchased a large php book several years ago and spent a couple of weeks going thru it.

If you feel comfortable with current-age HTML and CSS that is great.  Knowing php is worthless if you don't know proper html since the net result of your php effort will always end up being some valid HTML being sent out to the client.  One thing to learn is to avoid mixing the html and php code together.  Try to develop a script by starting with the php process and ending it with the html output.  Mixing the two makes analyzing a script later on very hard to do.  And problem solving for those of us who aren't familiar with your task is twice as hard.

As for databases - you should definitely learn some basics about using sql to write proper queries.  And when trying to access the database from a php script most people on this forum will suggest that you choose the PDO interface in php rather than mysqlI.   Be aware that the older 'mysql' interface IS DEPRECATED and should not be used. 

Lastly - I suggest creating a link on your desktop to direct you to the function reference portion of the official PHP.NET manual.  Here it is: PHP Functions  It will come in handy probably every 5 minutes during your early learning process (and quite often even after that).

Oh - and if you haven't yet begun using a good ide for writing your html/css and whatever else, you should find one that you like and make good use of it.  Having an ide that supports the language(s) that you are using and highlights code in a meaningful way so as to point out simple syntax/typos/punctuation/etc. errors will be a true timesaver as you write your code, especially php.  I use a little-mentioned one myself so I won't offer it to you here.  Others will have their faves to give you.

Good luck in your new hobby!  And when looking for help here let me point out that keeping your focus on the center of your 'problem' and describing the situation clearly and posting properly enclosed code showing the pertinent section that you have identified as the probable cause is most important here.  Note the code tag at the top of the posting window (<>) for wrapping your code.  Be sure to use a copy/paste to enter code rather than re-typing some code to show us.  Time and time again people type in the problem code and introduce a new error in it that causes us to get side-tracked from addressing your problem.  Try to keep your posted code to just the part that you think is the problem.  Posting  a hundred or more lines of code will cause people to lose interest very quickly.

[taquitosensei]

Also if you're having an issue. Explaining what your expected end result is, can be more helpful than the error sometimes. Because then we can say you'll never get there from here. Try it this way. 

[maxxd]

Personally, I learned from books - specifically, 'Core PHP Programming second edition - revised for PHP4!'. Don't even bother looking it up; it's still there but it was published in 2000 so it's a joke at this point. My favorite book is 'PHP Objects, Patterns, and Practice' (currently on edition 5), but that's sounds like it's higher-level than what you're currently looking for. However, the point is that different people learn different ways. I've met people who just jumped in and started cobbling some code together from S.O. and Google and somehow (to me) still ended up being good programmers. I've also heard good things about Codecademy, but have never actually used it myself. There are a plethora of YouTube tutorials, books, and written tutorials out there - just vet them carefully before you use any of what they have to say on a publicly-accessible site (this is a great place to do that). Whatever you do, make sure to find forums like this one and ask questions when you have them - and take the answers and code reviews that may be given.