advancing with php

[akurtula]

Hi,

 

As many people that use the killer videos and tuts, i feel that i got the hang of php. i am able to write fully functioned shopping carts (my imagination is not great so i dont know what other find of php projects to create )

 

so i feel that i know the basics and i'm at a stage where most tutorials (outside of the killer "production") seem familiar, and in most cases I tend to skip the writers explanation and just examine the code.

 

in fact this kind of tut seem to suit me best, where i can sit down with a pen and paper and take notes on the things that the author did that i would not have done (therefore, change by "bad" habits)

 

is there anything that i could be doing in order to "push" by self, without waiting for the "next" tutorial. something which would involve me doing by own investigation/research (as i said, you have no idea, how great i felt as i went though the tutorial i linked bellow)

 

like i could easily rewrite the oop tutorials Stefan wrote, or rewrite my shopping carts or book review systems, but i seem to be re-writing the same functionality (like at school, where the teacher would make you write a sentence 35 times, which maybe 10/35 times you get the spelling wrong but you are still writing the same thing)

 

it does feel like this "question" may not be the best question in this forum (for that i'm sorry); but I would really appreciate it if you could share some recommendations on what i should be doing to improve on programming (other than following tutorials)

 

thanks so much

[falkencreative]

Here are a couple options:

 

-- How much do you know about OOP / MVC? (Beyond the basics, I mean. Can you build full OOP/MVC applications? Things that are significantly more complicated than some of Stefan's simple examples?) That would be the first place to start if you don't know that much.

-- I have a series on creating a basic administration system in the KillerSites University that you might want to look at.

-- There is an "Advanced PHP" course in the KS University/also sold separately on killerphp.com that could be useful.

-- Consider starting a new personal project... Maybe something not shopping cart related. Perhaps create a simple CMS, or some sort of social networking application?

-- Consider looking into learning a PHP framework of some sort. It can be a big help in speeding up your coding. I'm a big fan of CodeIgniter, but there are a lot of alternatives out there.

[akurtula]

OOP related, I had to create small book review site for University, where I used OOP, which consisted read,write, edit and delete data from Database, where follows on from Stefans structure (plus tips from other tuts), I made use of all the public private and protected variables and functions (unfortunately I don't have live samples). But of course the procedural version of the shopping cart is better, as i am better and slightly quicker at debugging it.

 

i have not created any CMSs - i might start something like that

 

would a frame work teach me anything, or just make the php "writing" easier? as i remember, last year i worked with the 960 grid (css) frame work for few months, and also i used to use my css code library for projects (with small changes to suite the project in hand) and at the end, when i started to write by own css (again without the help of framework or my library), i was not as quick as before (in that i needed the help the dreamweaver hints) - and that is the only reason i have ignored the use of php framework, as php is harder than css, and i do not think that i am that advanced at php

 

so if php frameworks are anything like the 960 grid framework, I don't think that (at this stage) i would benefit from it, as I'm am not creating projects for commercial use (therefore time consumption in personal projects is not a problem if it means i could get more learning out of it)

 

I might have a look at those advanced series you mentioned - but maybe because I'm "lazy" or lack experience, when I follow (step-by-step) tutorials, I don't seem to take much in

like i followed the OOP tuts from Stefan a long time a go (not long after publishing them), it took me a long time before i sat down and improved upon what Stefan covered

 

but yes, even though I'm not sure what really would be involved in creating a CMS, I think that is the thing that might help me

 

thanks

Edited September 26, 2010 by akurtula

[falkencreative]

Regarding the "will learning a Framework help me learn PHP" question...

 

I would say the main advantage of learning a framework is speed of development/simplicity. A framework will give you a solid foundation to build an application on, meaning that you don't have to constantly recreate the basic functionality that nearly all applications need. I like CodeIgniter because it provides a well thought out MVC structure, gives me automatic pretty urls, and includes quite a few helper libraries that mean I don't have to build a lot of generic functionality myself.

 

I think you will learn something when working with a framework -- anytime you work with someone else's code, you tend to pick up new/different ways of doing things. CodeIgniter definitely helped solidify my MVC knowledge.

 

That said, sounds like working on a personal project like a CMS might be the way to go. Maybe try building it using MVC/OOP as a learning experience.

[akurtula]

i will look at Codelgniter, just to get a feel to what it is about (and maybe get some form of "good practice" tips). Also (alongside) definitely look at creating a CMS.

 

(i have not done any form of research yet) - is there any tutorial/topic of VERY basic definition in the killer sphere, in what would CMS consist of -

 

on top of my head, I'm thinking wordpress (which i have used) - So when i say, i'm going to create a CMS, is wordpress (content editing site) the only referral point. so basically my aim would be to recreate a wordpress type (but less complex) - are their other websites which may be considered as being CMSs in nature

 

thanks a lot falkencreative

Edited September 26, 2010 by akurtula

[falkencreative]

If you're looking to get an overview of CodeIgniter, look at the screencasts here: http://codeigniter.com/tutorials/ or the first video or two in this 18 part series: http://net.tutsplus.com/articles/news/codeigniter-from-scratch-day-1/. It probably sounds a bit complicated the way the files are split up into controllers, models and views, but it makes your life a lot easier in the long run.

 

Regarding building a CMS... I think a CMS can be as simple or as complicated as you want to make it. In its simplest form, it's a system that allows you to store content in a database, edit the content via some sort of administrative system, and display the content in the front-end of the site.

 

For example, you could do something very simple where you store blocks of content in a database. The system wouldn't handle page creation (you'd do that manually) but you could display data from the database by using some sort of function (for example: "echo display_content('content block name');"). The function would search the database for the content related to the particular block name you gave it, and display it in the page.

 

A step beyond that would be some sort of simple page/templating system, so you wouldn't have to create all of your pages by hand, perhaps including the name of the page in the URL: "index.php?page=about".

 

And then a step beyond that might be to implement pretty URLs using .htaccess that would hide the "index.php" portion of the URL and give you prettier URLs like "yourdomain.com/about/".

 

Just a couple things to think about. I'd start as small and as simple as possible, and work your way up to the more complicated stuff.

[falkencreative]

I also forgot to mention... you might find this tutorial useful: http://css-tricks.com/examples/WebAppFromScratch/

 

It's written by Chris Coyier (frontend dev) and Jason Lengstorf (PHP dev) -- both people I really respect. It would be well worth it to work your way through the series if you have the time.

[akurtula]

Thanks for explaining the starting point of where to start with a CMS, i think i got the idea.

and the css-tricks series seems fantastic I will definitely go through them.

 

Also I just finished watching the two screencasts on the framework, it doesn't seem like anything I have tried before, so I will definitely play around with that.

 

the blog in 20 minutes tutorial seemed really impressive, but of course if I were to start working with that framework, I would start forgetting what I already know. But as you said I might learn few things (at least) about the file structure used

 

I do like the look of this framework, and will definitely experiment with it, but in parallel with the other php practice.

 

Thanks so much, you've helped me clarify a lot of things.

Edited September 27, 2010 by akurtula