I'm lost in PHP

[ferni5]

I'm trying to get into PHP. I'm learning about basic php and OOP. There are so many articles that I read that suggest to learn different PHP applications like PEAR, Smarty, or Wordpress. What do I focus on? What do developers use on a daily basis? What would best help my PHP skills?

[administrator]

Hi,

 

Start with the basics, then move on from there:

 

http://www.killerphp.com/tutorials/beginners-php/

 

Stefan

[falkencreative]

I wouldn't touch any of those to start. Get your hands on basic PHP, learn the basic tags and get comfortable with writing your own stuff first. Once you are comfortable with that, then look into a PHP framework. You don't have to learn it all at once.

 

Definitely check out Stefan's tutorials on PHP (killerphp.com) and I've also found the tutorials on PHPvideotutorials.com really helpful when I was first learning.

 

As for which framework you should learn when you get to that point... it really depends on what best fits how you code, and of course the functionality you are looking for. I like CodeIgniter, others like CakePHP, etc etc.

[einsteinsboi]

Not to be redundant but I absolutely concur. Start with the very basics, learn to write your own code, write some apps, THEN delve into a framework. This approach will mean you get a better grasp of what's going with the classes and helpers that a framework provides you.

 

Good luck!

[ferni5]

Besides the basic php, what do you think a beginning developer should get into? Wordpress, PHP Cake, Smarty?

[falkencreative]

Besides the basic php, what do you think a beginning developer should get into? Wordpress, PHP Cake, Smarty?

 

Wordpress is a content management system written in PHP, but it isn't a PHP framework like Cake PHP, Smarty etc. PHP frameworks are intended to simplify some of the basic functionality (for example, handling forms, dealing with form validation, etc etc) so you can write your own PHP code faster.

 

I personally would take a look either at Cake PHP or CodeIgniter. Both have pretty good documentation and should be interesting to learn. Nettuts (http://net.tutsplus.com/?s=codeigniter) has some beginner CodeIgniter video tutorials, including a series I've been doing recently called "Code Igniter from scratch" series by Jeffrey Way that is pretty good. For Cake PHP, I believe NetTuts also has some videos, but I'd suggest looking at http://phpvideotutorials.com/courses -- there are a couple low cost courses that teach you how to build applications using Cake PHP.