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#1 2007-06-27 21:43:33
- FireFusion
- Member
- Registered: 2005-05-10
- Posts: 698
I want to learn a bit of PHP. Best place to start?
I think it’s time I learnt a bit of PHP. I’m not looking to be a pro but i’d like to be able to understand other peoples plugins and maybe build my own basic ones.
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#3 2007-07-07 06:56:41
- jadehouse
- Member
- Registered: 2007-06-26
- Posts: 75
Re: I want to learn a bit of PHP. Best place to start?
Books are OK, but this is far easier to follow: http://movielibrary.lynda.com/html/modPage.asp?ID=435
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#4 2007-07-07 15:50:56
- rsilletti
- Moderator
- From: Spokane WA
- Registered: 2004-04-28
- Posts: 707
Re: I want to learn a bit of PHP. Best place to start?
php.net is where I find myself returning to again and again.
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#5 2007-07-08 23:54:36
- Mary
- Sock Enthusiast
- Registered: 2004-06-27
- Posts: 6,236
Re: I want to learn a bit of PHP. Best place to start?
You’ll want to get yourself a program such as Xampp. You could make your own custom installation later, if that appeals to you.
There are a lot of free PHP tutorials about for the basics, so I’d start with those before paying for anything. Here’s a couple:
The PHP manual, as already mentioned by Rick, is good too.
When you want to get into forms, email and databases, make sure you read up on security for those things (XSS, email header injection, SQL injection, etc). A book or two on that area is a good investment, and there are a few good free articles on the subject.
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#6 2007-07-12 00:15:31
- Logoleptic
- Plugin Author
- From: Kansas, USA
- Registered: 2004-02-29
- Posts: 482
Re: I want to learn a bit of PHP. Best place to start?
When you’re ready to dig in to more advanced topics, this book is excellent. It’s immense, but that’s because it covers such a broad variety of topics (PHP, MySQL, PEAR, even a little Smarty). I’m working my way through it in my spare time. Clients keep asking me for custom server-side work, so I figured it was time to beef up my knowledge. :-)
The one drawback of the book is that it focuses strongly on PHP 5, which still has a fairly low adoption rate. So far, I haven’t seen any guidance on backward compatibility. Note that a third edition of the book is due out in August, and the number “5” has been dropped from the title. Perhaps this new edition will incorporate information about previous PHP and MySQL versions.
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