What do you guys think is the best way to go about learning PHP? What are the key things any PHP programmer should know? More importantly, which terms/functions/etc do you think you should learn first and foremost? Which ones do you think you should wait to learn, because of complexity?

I've been meaning to learn the stuff for the longest time, but never knew where to start.

start witht he tutorials at http://www.w3schools.com im only just learning PHP myself so i can really help...
sorry...

I recommend Php & MySQL for dummies by Janet Valade
I purchased it with the intent on learning Php and within 3 days I had coded my own website from scratch which included full admin backend, dynamic front end which was search engine friendly, article posting, image uploads and members control panel.

Craig

wow.... are you serious? I might spree and invest in that

Online tutorials are great and there's a lot of information on the web but I started out with an old-fashioned book. I got a great deal on eBay. A beginner's book usually takes you through building a few basic apps which give you the proper fundamentals.

http://www.php.net should be your first source

It's better also to start to install Apache , PHP & MySql...then you can try to run your scripts from your web server.

I also started with a book. It is great because I can always go back and check it out. I think php.net can be confusing to someone just starting out. That site tends to be a bit technical. You can always find free tutorials online but I would say it is very much worth it to spend a few bucks on a good book.

I also recommend setting up your own development server. My reason is totally selfish though: I don't want you experimenting on a server I might also be on. There are bundles to help get you started like phpdev. You can find phpdev and others at Hotscripts.com :: PHP :: Software and Servers :: Installation Kits.

I usually learn a new languages by jumping right in the code. Since there are so many open source PHP scripts available there's is plenty of code to study. Try www.Hotscripts.com. Download a script, install it on your development server and play with it.

People I recommend learning from:

Rasmus Lerdorf - Creator of PHP
Chris Shiflett - PHP Security Guru
David Sklar - PHP Guru
Sterling Hughes - PHP Standards Guru

There's more to being a programmer than just writing code.

zend.com courses are great i ll sign up for them this summer

Great information guys. I really appreciate it, and I think I'll be picking up a couple books actually.

PHP for Dummies & PHP and MySQL Web Development: Third Ed

After I read both books front to back 2 or 3 times, I think I'll then go into a bunch of scripts I already have running and mess around with them. I don't think I'll actually try to code something of my own for a few months. Just to make sure I have my feet completly wet.

I find learning from books alone to be virtually impossible. As you read the books I'd recommend trying some of the stuff out, building some toy examples, generally messing around to see what you can come up with.

I have found that the best way to go about learning PHP is to learn these fundamentals in order.

Learn to use $_GET and $_POST superglobal arrays to access data submitted from forms.

Learn to loop through the data using while, for and foreach loop structures.

Finally learn to store data with flat files and then a MySQL database. I put this one last because you will need the above two skills to use these properly.

That may seem vague but if you search for those specific topics in order and do online tutorials you will understand enough about coding php to tackle most tasks.

I learned it by nessecity. At first I got a book, which I never read, because its not very interesting reading. But when you want to get something done on your site, suddenly its all very interesting so you read.

Also, php.net is great for reference, because I can remember the function I need and what it doesn but I can never remember the exact syntax.

Leah

Well if you're new it defiantly helps to have a book of some kind whether it be an eBook or one you actually bought. I used one when I first started out not much good recommending it now though it was made for php3. For testing purposes an easy program to get apache, php and mysql all setup is probably easyPHP although some of it is in French I believe it's not hard to figure out. You can find it at http://www.easyphp.org/

easy php is french by default but you can change to english once installed

Originally Posted by 0beron

I find learning from books alone to be virtually impossible. As you read the books I'd recommend trying some of the stuff out, building some toy examples, generally messing around to see what you can come up with.

Really, I bought about 3 books on PHP and I learned ALOT!

Originally Posted by dan245

Really, I bought about 3 books on PHP and I learned ALOT!

You have to see it from his point of view we all learn diffrently some people will learn through books where as some would much prefer to get there hands dirty and jump right in.

I prefer books which get you to do stuff so you have examples of work and you can see things work and then learn how and why they work.