5 Web Sites To Help You Start Learning PHP Today
Anyone designing Web sites for a while will eventually start to wonder how to automate stuff. Whether it’s to find a better way than creating each individual page manually, or you want to add some extra features to the site, you’ll likely want to add some dynamic content. This is done with server-side scripting. Some popular ones are PHP, ColdFusion and ASP. Though they can be interchangeable, the latter two are geared more to Windows servers and the first is geared to Unix/Linux servers.
The concept behind server-side scripting is pretty simple. You have a Web site (in HTML). You create a database. Then PHP (or other programming language you choose) is the go-between from your site to the database. For example, if you have a real estate listings Web site, and a visitor to your site is looking at the listing for a property at 123 Main Street. You would use PHP to go to the database and retrieve the information like number of bathroooms, number of rooms, price, etc. Using a blend of HTML and PHP (well CSS and Flash can come into the picture too but we’ll keep it simple), you can make the page look exactly as you want it, and when changes are made to the database, the page will automatically be updated for any future visitors to the page. Phew. I hope you’re still with me.
If you know HTML, learning PHP, though not learned completely overnight, isn’t that difficult.
And most hosting accounts offer it as part of the basic package. So if you’ve got an account already, you can start adding PHP features to your site right away.
Some sites to help you get started at learning PHP are:
PHP 101: PHP For the Absolute Beginner
This 15-part set of tutorials will start you off with one called “Down the Rabbit Hole” which starts with the equivalent of a Hello World program - traditionally, the first thing you learn when programming a new language is learn to write “Hello World” on the screen - if that works, it makes you feel good because you got something to work, and it starts to show you the specifics of programming in that language at the same time. Does this all make sense? I’m still waking up.
Anyways, going through the tutorials, you’ll know how to put together a Web application (poll) and even an RSS news aggregator.
The W3Schools PHP Tutorial
I’ve always found the W3Schools tutorials as better references if you’re looking for something specific than one where you use to learn from scratch and move forward. Not sure why that is, but it’s been like that for years for me. It’s got some great information about all kinds of PHP functions, not to mention information to help you freshen up your other Web skills (CSS, etc.).
It’s also got a very complete section on MySQL which is likely the type of database you’ll use with your PHP site.
PHPBuddy
I just found this site today and I love it! It’s got a simple layout, looks really easy to understand, and start your off with easy projects, to then move you forward in your PHP learning journey. Yes, I said it… PHP learning jouney. Sounds nice and peaceful, huh?
Ok on to the next one…
PHP Learn-It!
Walks you through writing to databases, reading databases, cookies, and the most interesting part of it to me, being a more advanced tutorial but definitely useful to anyone using PHP in the long run, a tutorial to save and edit the database using AJAX. You’ll understand more about AJAX and what it can do as you develop more and more Web sites but basically, in his case, it can let you make changes on a page and to the database, without having to reload the whole page - like when you’re posting a comment on YouTube and it saves your comment, without reloading the whole page and starting the whole video again. Don’t get the point? No problem, you likely will one day.
PHP Video Tutorials
I hadn’t planned on adding any sites that charge a fee. I like free stuff. But this one’s interesting enough to get my attention and make me consider using in the future. I’ve never used it so I have no idea of the quality of the videos or the information… But I like the fact that they walk you through it - they mention that you code each line as they do… So by the end of the lessons, you have a site that’s basically ready to go. It’s about $10-$15 per lesson to build a whole site.
Oh wait, I had almost missed it. I know I sound like an informercial (”wait! there’s more!”) but it’s not one of those things. I just got sort of excited for a minute… I just noticed the free videos. So there ya go, you can see how it is.
And in case this is coming across like a bit of an ad, please note that I AM NOT AFFILIATED WITH ANY OF THE SITES IN THIS ARTICLE. So there.
In closing…
The great thing about PHP and HTML is that you can program them in whatever tool you have available. On Windows, Notepad will do the job. You save the files as .php and you’re good to go.
In the next few days, we’ll look at tools to help you program PHP.
I hope this helps a lot of you out!
Tags: php, tutorials, web developers
