I have taught myself HTML, a good deal of CSS, and am looking at delving into PHP now. HTML and CSS i learned as a combination of trial and error (getting my hands dirty), online documentation, and tutorial videos.

Its obvious to me though that PHP is not as simple as HTML or CSS is. I don't doubt i can teach myself, i would be fooling myself to think it would be as easy though.

So, for those who know PHP, how'd you learn it? In school, through books, videos, online courses/documents, a friend/teacher? Go back into the past and get nastalgic.

Thanks

Yeah, I dont think PHP is something you can learn through trial and error. I found the best way was from reading books, this is the one I used:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sams-Teach-Y...5653637&sr=8-1

Then after reading that I've just used the web for learning more! As that book doesn't go too deep into anything, but its great to get started!

Awsome thanks, ill look into it. I have 2 video courses from Lynda.com and have just started watching 1 course. I have also throught trial and error learned a very small bit of PHP since my forum is based on PHPBB3 and i tend to like to dig around and modify things to my taste.

Wonder what other ways people have learned PHP.

I personally use http://www.w3schools.com/PHP/default.asp as a reference for PHP.

Hope this helps!

I personally learned from trial and error, but if you want to get your hands dirty I would learn a PHP MVC framework like CakePHP or Qcodo. There are tons of examples out there!

I learned it from manuals, books and tutorials mainly. Anyway I knew C before so it was harder for me to learn HTML or CSS than PHP .

Originally Posted by UCDaZ

I personally learned from trial and error, but if you want to get your hands dirty I would learn a PHP MVC framework like CakePHP or Qcodo. There are tons of examples out there!

Whats MVC mean? could you explain.

Originally Posted by rewy

I learned it from manuals, books and tutorials mainly. Anyway I knew C before so it was harder for me to learn HTML or CSS than PHP .

I cant claim to know C, but i have taken beginner college courses in C++ and Java before and i can see the similarities.

Originally Posted by ctbinccp

I cant claim to know C, but i have taken beginner college courses in C++ and Java before and i can see the similarities.

Yeah - The syntax is very similar and I believe PHP was created with C++ as the inspiration. One thing you will notice is that PHP is a scripting language and it parses realtime (does not compile). The output buffer sends data directly to the users browser so it can be inline within HTML structure.

I first learned with help from a friend and then used online tutorials and messing around with script examples and open source applications.

Well my way is pretty interesting I guess it was luck.

I wanted to create a community, and I didn't know how I should start so I asked a few webmasters and they asked me to go to hotscripts.com and download a free community. So I did, but that was not what I expected, because all I could see was a lot of letters, symbols and numbers.

So I searched google for learn how to make a community, and a php script came. I have never learned php from scratch, I started out with an advanced code, And worked my way thrue it, and now I can practally code anything I want to..