Best way to learn PHP basics

They have: 3 posts

Joined: Sep 2006

Can anyone suggest the best way to go about learning some basic PHP coding?

I have recently begun work on a website and trying to take the easy option, being a newbie to website design, I purchased a template which is coded in PHP.

I am trying to customise my template to make it more original, using Dreamweaver as an editing tool. I can handle some of the very basic changes through trial and error etc but I would really like to gain some basic knowledge of PHP which would help me in this sort of task.

Any reccomendations of where to start?

pr0gr4mm3r's picture

He has: 1,502 posts

Joined: Sep 2006

http://www.php.net

The manual and documentation is all there, and you can search for functions to use. Very useful site.

Busy's picture

He has: 6,151 posts

Joined: May 2001

trial and error is a good way to learn, when you stumble across a function or bit you dont understand look it up on the php manual to get an idea of what is happening.

If you download a php/mysql/apache bundle you can do it on your pc without upsetting anything (ie crashing the server, which is hard to do but is possible thru bad coding)

pr0gr4mm3r's picture

He has: 1,502 posts

Joined: Sep 2006

What's this 'php/mysql/apache bundle' you're talking about?

Busy's picture

He has: 6,151 posts

Joined: May 2001

You can download the bundle all over the place, one I recommend (and have no affiliation to) is firepages.com.au

Ideally you should download the same version as your host uses, although you can run several versions of php etc on your pc (just have to edit the php.ini to point to the one you want to use).
Some bundles come complete with the manuals.

pr0gr4mm3r's picture

He has: 1,502 posts

Joined: Sep 2006

Sweet, thanks for the info.

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