Learning "php"
DY357LX
Playing since day 1. Still can't Comm.England Join Date: 2002-10-27 Member: 1651Members, Constellation
Playing since day 1. Still can't Comm.England Join Date: 2002-10-27 Member: 1651Members, Constellation
in Off-Topic
<div class="IPBDescription">Where Is A Good Place To Start?</div> A friend of mine wants me to help maintain his site for him.
"Sure" i said, afterall he does lend me lots of games and
sells me them very cheap.
Its just that I presumed his site was .html.... it's not. It's php.
So now i'm on a mission to learn the basics of php.
Can anyone point me in the direction of some tutorials
or examples or something "nubcaek" friendly please?
Don't worry, Google is my next stop, I just thought i'd
ask here in the hope that someone could point me towards
nub specific tutorials.
Thanks
"Sure" i said, afterall he does lend me lots of games and
sells me them very cheap.
Its just that I presumed his site was .html.... it's not. It's php.
So now i'm on a mission to learn the basics of php.
Can anyone point me in the direction of some tutorials
or examples or something "nubcaek" friendly please?
Don't worry, Google is my next stop, I just thought i'd
ask here in the hope that someone could point me towards
nub specific tutorials.
Thanks
Comments
The official manual is more than useful. If there's any functions or whatever, it explains them all in depth with examples of how they're used. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->
I learned fine from the PHP manual. 'cept it's like my fifth or sixth language, by now, and I also re-did some Java tutorials from uni, in PHP. But regardless, the PHP manual is actually quite acceptable to learn from (unlike cerain other scripting languages' manuals, I could mention *cough*PERL*cough*).
Oh, PHP is, uh, multiplayer only. So ask your friend if he can set up a space for you to learn on. Unless you want to install Apache and PHP on your machine at home, that is.
Anyway, I wouldn't worry about learning SQL. Yeah, it's useful in web development, but unless you actually <i>need</i> it, I wouldn't bother. You probably won't need it if you're just helping a friend with his website.
Oh, almost forgot. One very important thing: PHP is a proper scripting language; it's not simply markup like HTML. It'd be a hell of a lot easier to learn it if you already have programming experience (although... seem to remember that you do, don't you?). PHP is especially nice because its syntax mimics C++\Java, <i>or</i> BASIC\Pascal, depending on which you want to use. It lets you use {} style braces <i>and</i> <span style='font-family:COURIER'>if endif</span> blocks <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Any way, if you are going to get a book, I'd recommend Wrox's Beginnging PHP 4.
and i'll pop into my local WHSmith for a look at what PHP
books they have later on today.
I have a decent knowledge of html so hopefully this should
help. Again, thanks for the posts. Much appreciated!
If you have any experience with C++ or Java, PHP is cake. If you've never had ANY programming whatsoever before, it is a pretty big learning curve, so be prepared for that.
To say that PHP is good for nothing but web pages is silly. We use it for tons of things that never touch HTML at work every day.
<img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/style_images/TSA_Skin-975/icon12.gif' border='0' alt='user posted image' /> PHP
PHP is really more useful for websites when you use it with MySQL.
Right now I can do things like <a href='http://hlpbm.free.fr/fs/batbal.jpg' target='_blank'>that</a> <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo--> And yes it's a chat and a battleship like game. Everything was made with PHP and MySQL <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->
BTW, PHP started as "Personal Home Pages" but it became more and more popular and they renamed it to "Php: Hypertext Preprocessor"
EDIT: Why can't I post 4 smileys? that's..... dumb
But it will be. If you code PHP, using MySQL is pretty much inevitable. You WILL use it sometime or another. :P
Great book, covers all the essentials plus introduces some really cool new developments and gives resources to keep learning about those if you're interested.