[PHP] Learning PHP

Joined
Nov 15, 2008
Messages
3,848
Reaction score
1,922
Look, here's the thing.
I've been dieing to learn a language to rid me of my spare time.
I've chosen PHP.. but whats the easiest way to learn it.
I've covered w3school's php lesson and understand the basic's rather fluently.
Whats the easiest way to learn it?
following tutorials?
or making stuff and improving it along the way?
 
I've learnt php by trying to create my own CMS, you know, start with login & registration, then profiles, articles etc, if you don't have any clue how to start, just read one of those "login system php" tutorials, use it as basic and slowly improve it.
 
Awesome.
Currently, i'm working on a Personal Messaging system, but struggling..
Progress; 0%.

Start by making login and registration systems.. Find the best ways to input your information into the database, and don't forget about SQL injections-related exploits. It'll be better if you already get used to protect your users information and your database from the beggining. After that, just move on like foxx said.. Do random things.. Like forums, CMS's, etcetc. There's thousands of things you can do to learn PHP :p
good luck
 
Really?
So it's just making Login and Out. News Articals etc?

Well you've got to break down the term, CMS. It stands for Content Managing System, of course.

With that said, it's very easy to create one. First stages of a CMS might be a comment system. Where a guest/user on a site can enter content, and have it display on the site. Well that's just the first step. We need to be able to manage the content too. So what is it to manage content? Is it an astronomical feat, or can it be done by Joe Blow the Web Designer? Well if Joe Blow knows how to deal with PHP and a SQL database of some sort, then he should be able to do it fairly easy.

So now it became exponentially easier. To create a simple CMS for managing comments on a site, we must have a way to add, edit, and delete comments. That doesn't mean it has to connect to a user database or a ranking system or any of that hard stuff. We just want to give anyone viewing the site the power to manage every comment on the site. That's extraordinarily impractical and a huge spam risk, but hey, it's a CMS nonetheless.

So to create a simple CMS, we need 3 forms. One of them is static (add). One of them is identical to the first, but automatically filled in once a user clicks a pencil above a comment (edit). The last of them is a delete button attached by the pencil- above each comment (delete).

So if Joe Blow could put all of these things together, he'd have himself one of the simplest CMS'.

Let me think.. The first thing I ever made in PHP was a user system. Including registration, login, and ranking.
It was primitive to say the least..

One thing I have to say is that lean is better. The least code you use to create a script the better. Sometimes different functions contain more back-end code then others, but if you try to make it with as little code as possible, usually it equals out much better. The heavier the code, the more the computer needs to think. The less thinking, the faster the computer!
 
Wow. That explained everything. :P:

I see how, or what you need to do in order to create a simple CMS. I'm still learning PHP along with more HTML & CSS. So, Once I get more experience with PHP. I'll see what I can come up with.

Thanks :)

P.S: Sorry iTyler & MOD's. Using this thread like my own.
 
Wow. That explained everything. :P:

I see how, or what you need to do in order to create a simple CMS. I'm still learning PHP along with more HTML & CSS. So, Once I get more experience with PHP. I'll see what I can come up with.

Thanks :)

P.S: Sorry iTyler & MOD's. Using this thread like my own.

Well as long as you don't take it too literal.. Lemme just highlight this:
s-p-n said:
That's extraordinarily impractical and a huge spam risk..

Okay, you're all set :cool:
 
The best way to learn is by doing, tutorials are fun at first, but if you don't take what you learn and do things on your own with it well you're really not much of a programmer are you? You have to learn the language (like you would any language in the real world) and speak to the computer with that language, if you can do something without a tutorial or having someone else code everything for you well you're well on your way to programming, I'm only saying this since some people think they code after downloading a script and installing it and claiming they've made something even though the reality is that they haven't done jip. Anyway good luck to you lot learning how to code. Remember, you have to be patient and practice, if you don't understand something create a small script to test the function you don't understand and then try it on your larger project, experiment you wont learn to speak spanish by thinking it in your head, you will learn it by trying to speak it and having 'test conversations' of it. :D
 
Back