zalir Posted May 5, 2007 Share Posted May 5, 2007 Alright well just to start off at the current moment I know html, xhtml, and css :-). Pretty decent amount I guess. I have always been considering learning PHP and I even got this book book on PHP called "PHP for Dummies". http://www.w3schools.com has good tutorials that I was planning on learning from as well. Besdies that though I would like to know if PHP is going to be right for me. I have the requirments (web hosting with everything installed on it already so I can just edit a document and have the PHP going through there). The reason I want to learn PHP though is so that I can have more control over my sites. For example I would like my sites viewers to be able to create their own account on my sites on which they would be able to comment on news articles, and post on forums. To add on to that I would like to have the knowledge on how to create my own forums (something similiar to this one) from scratch so that I can have more control over what I would like included. Now I don't know if that is possible since I do not have that much experiance with PHP but I was wondering if there was an easier language I could learn to help me accomplish these things. Was as well wondering if I could do pretty much the same thing with Javascript that I could do with PHP. Would there be a way for me to make user logins with Javascript?? Well I thank you for reading this and hope that you can assist me! Thank you in advance! Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/50085-deciding-whether-or-not-i-should-learn-php/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
benjaminbeazy Posted May 5, 2007 Share Posted May 5, 2007 learn php, if you want to develop sites. it is well worth it. easy to learn, extremely powerful, oh yeah.. and free. Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/50085-deciding-whether-or-not-i-should-learn-php/#findComment-245890 Share on other sites More sharing options...
zalir Posted May 5, 2007 Author Share Posted May 5, 2007 Would you say though that I can do the same with Javascript as I can with PHP? Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/50085-deciding-whether-or-not-i-should-learn-php/#findComment-245895 Share on other sites More sharing options...
benjaminbeazy Posted May 5, 2007 Share Posted May 5, 2007 some of the stuff, but not everything. and you wont have nearly as much control or security.. Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/50085-deciding-whether-or-not-i-should-learn-php/#findComment-245897 Share on other sites More sharing options...
zalir Posted May 5, 2007 Author Share Posted May 5, 2007 Alright well thank you very much! I will probably be taking the time then to learn PHP! Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/50085-deciding-whether-or-not-i-should-learn-php/#findComment-245901 Share on other sites More sharing options...
chronister Posted May 5, 2007 Share Posted May 5, 2007 Javascript is client side and can be disabled in a users browser. I am a STRONG advocate of not using Javascript for key site functionality. If you make the whole site run off of javascript and it is disabled, then your site will not work. PHP is a Server Side language, so it is done processing by the time you get to the browser window and cannot be disabled. It makes web design easier and you can make fewer pages while not losing the functionality. It is great for showing things like menus or user specific items only when a person is logged in properly. It allows you to template your site. Meaning, create one page (Mine are called header.php) that contains your header, footer and sitewide navigation, with an area for the content to appear. You create that file once, and include() it in your other pages. That way layout chages or navigation changes can be done in one place instead of across 10 pages or more. Javascript has it's place in limited fashion in my opinion. I actually don't know enough javascript to save my life, but the things i needed javascript for I could find ready made scripts. PHP is most certainly worth the time and effort. Once you get the basic syntax down, it is a pretty easy language to learn from there. The PHP manual is GREAT in the way it is written and gives examples. I am not too keen on the For Dummies series as they generally add too much fluff and junk in there. The book I learned from is called "How To Do everything with PHP & MySql" by Vikram Vaswami. Clear and well written with good examples. I have found some of the For Dummies example code does not work. If a person is just learning a new skill, they generally don't have the ability to troubleshoot code meant for teaching that person said skill. This forum is a Great place to learn to. As long as you show that you are trying to learn and not have someone else do the work, you will find loads of helpful people here. Here is a nice little trick for ya. If you use Firefox, then you can assign keywords to your bookmarks. Bookmark this link http://php.net/manual-lookup.php?pattern=%s Assign a nice simple keyword to it and you can perform php manual searches straight from your address bar. My keyword is p So when I type 'p date' without the quotes in my address bar it takes me to the page for the date function. Good luck in your endeavor. Happy Coding. Nate Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/50085-deciding-whether-or-not-i-should-learn-php/#findComment-245947 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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