Hi coders,

I am looking to learn to code php and wondered if there is an easy way to go about it! How did you guys learn and how did it take you to become competent?

Am I better off teaching myself? Taking a course (online/offline)?

Also are there any good supporting books/websites I can use to help?

Many thanks

The easiest way of learning something is by experience, in my opinion. However, I, along with basically anyone who will reply to this thread, would like to show you W3Schools, where they have really simple tutorials that teach a lot.

I agree with you Physicsguy!
you can easily learn PHP from W3schools and tizag. These site have best material about the PHP and I am sure you don't face trouble while reading it.

I agree with the two above me, experience has been my primary method of learning programming languages... I used to think of a project I wished to code/program, and I look up how to do it, take snippits, paste them together and use logic to make them work.

Hello ...

I am learning PHP @ the moment. I advice you to go to Lynda.com where you can find PHP and get as advanced as possible. If you are going to learn every day then it may take you 2 to 4 weeks.

FarrisFahad

If you are going to learn every day then it may take you 2 to 4 weeks

You are of course joking.

I have been coding in PHP (and other languages) for WELL over TEN YEARS and STILL don't consider myself "advanced"

Originally Posted by chrishirst

You are of course joking.

I have been coding in PHP (and other languages) for WELL over TEN YEARS and STILL don't consider myself "advanced"

You said working not learning ...
I meant if you spend the whole week learning PHP you can get some where

Before you start "working" in a language you have to have learnt the basics at the very least, and that can take longer than a couple of weeks.

Especially with the somewhat arcane function naming system (or lack of) of PHP.

I am learning from PHP Tutorial of w3resource. They have covered PHP in great detail with plenty of examples. It's very easy to understand for beginners. Moreover, you can practice examples with their online practice editor.

mogulmedia

Take Scott's and the other's advice and start out with w3schools. They explain things in layman's terms making it easy to understand and have tutorials to practice with. Plus like Feso says the practice editor is extremely helpful.

Lynda.com is not free and very pricey - you might be able to get a 2-week free trial but you'll need a lot more than 2 weeks to really understand the lessons. Most of them are video's and it can be difficult to understand what they're saying - some of the instructors talk fast and don't tell you what specific tools or settings to use (advanced Illustrator/Photoshop techniques)

Anyone who tells you that you will learn it in 2-4 weeks is minimizing the importance of truly understanding what you learn. It's not the same as memorizing and that's the best you can hope for in a few weeks. The understanding only comes with time, experience and practice, practice, practice!

Originally Posted by honeyclarck

i think that w3school is good.....

Is that so? Well since you think the w3school is good then why are you all over this forum posting threads asking where you can learn, HTML, ASP.Net, and JAVA?

I am taking the Lynda.com PHP and MySQL course at the moment.

I hope I can make a website when it ends so that I can learn by practically applying what I learned.

I have checked w3schools after reading everyone's posts and found something which scared me a little. They say I will need to learn the basics of

• HTML/XHTML
• JavaScript

Which of course I do not know at all and how long will it take to learn the basics of the above mentioned languages?

Before you EVEN think about using PHP to create the HTML & CSS for a website you OBVIOUSLY need to know about HTML & CSS, how can you create someting that is to create a HTML document if YOU cannot construct a HTML document in the first place?

Contrary to what you think you have read, PHP is NOT used to "build a website". PHP is used to generate the HTML that builds the site

chrishirst I would like your opinion about which languages to learn and what should be the order of learning so that I can make a website?

Thanks for clearing up my confusion.

Clearing up somethings posted by me and FarrisFahad
Lynda.com did not tell anything about making sites with PHP it was all my misunderstanding. Also the teacher did not say that you can make a website or will become a master of PHP after you are done with the essentials course. I only watched the Intro videos and installation for now and he seems like a good teacher.

Start off with learning how a HTML document is structured, don't get involved in styling with CSS until you can put the building blocks of HTML together, and you have a good understanding of the basics of inline and block elements and how the document flow works.

Then you can move onto positioning and floating.

Pretty colours and fonts are a low priority at first.
What you don't need to know is how to design a page, your part is the development. That is, how to take a picture of a page from a designer and turn it into code.

100% right as always Chirs

That is how most books and classes will teach it also.
1. HTML
2. CSS
3. PHP

That is the order. Don't waste your money on classes. Tutorials online are the BEST way to learn and try out the coding languages.

I I think that there is no need to learn CSS and HTML. Because Dreamweaver CS5 can do both without coding, although you need to learn them "CSS & HTML" if you want to be good at coding websites

I am saying that because I am currently learning PHP and I have a basic understanding of CSS and HTML

FarrisFahad

Dreamweaver (and other WYSIWG editors) is great for websites that aren't too advanced. But if you're aiming at doing a somewhat advanced design and if you want to have full contol of it you're gonna have to dig into the code yourself.

Hi Mattias - I think even if you're not doing advanced design you need to learn HTML. I guess I'm one of those people that need to know what everything means..... I also think there's a lot of room for improvement on these programs that code your designs.