Just started learning properly

[weasel]

Hi peeps,

Well after a few years wanting to learn PHP or any productive language, I finally brought a book from ebay, well 2 books actuall as it turned out.

I have tried many of these so called home study courses which turned out just to be wallet hunters and that got me no where. The most recent of which I had a battle with and won just before christmas.

Nearly about to give up, I decided to take the advice of many from here and get books.
So last night I hopped on ebay. At first I was going to go straight for the jugular and dive into one of the many C variants, but decided to go with something I am used to and that's PHP.

I have played about with many PHP driven CMS's over the past 4 or so years so I felt that to be a good place to start, and with my html and css coming along nicely (after some cool people here convinced me to give up tables) I thought "why not".

As luck would have it I found a copy of PHP & MySQL for dummies for a tenner on ebay, and doubly lucky, they were just up the road so I went to collect it today.
Unfortunately, they were out of the 3rd edition so I made do with the second edition which covers php5 but not 6 like the third edition mentions.

Either way I get to grasp the fundamental basics.
I chose the for dummies series because even I can't go wrong there, and because they didnt have the third edition book I came for, he threw in PHP5 by Visual Blueprint for a fiver.

I'm about a quater of the way threw the for dummies book and already all the dots are starting to connect with the things I know about to the things I dont.. its great.

For years I have been aprehensive about teaching myself, mostly at that time due to the lack of books on the subject available and also because of the way the ones available were written, they were hard to follow and assumed you knew loads, even when the books was written for beginners.
Hence the home study idea, plenty of support, yeah to empty wallets lol.

Well, I'm really enjoying this it's hard to put the book down now, I just want to go off and write a CMS lol

So I dare say you will see more of me around here now when I get stuck or something lol.

Perhaps now I can begin to build a more complete understanding of programming / coding without relying on just what I have learnt over the years by ripping appart others work to figure out how it works

I'm just pleased that it's sinking in lol

Just thought I'd share

[alexgeek]

Don't worry about your book not covering PHP6.
It's not even out yet. Enjoy your book!

[weasel]

Cool, thanks! I'm off to build my first DB in a moment for a lottery program I am devising using the examples and methods in the book, looking forward to it

[alexgeek]

Sounds interesting. Is that a scenario given or did you think of it yourself?
I feel like having a bash at it now ha.

[weasel]

It's something I wanted to do myself, the examples in the book are for a pet ecommerce store so I plan to follow the examples given and complete the whole thing but I also want to do my own thing on the side to use what I learn.

Things like grabbing a winning number combo from the DB at random is something I'll need to develop with out the aid of the book which is where I really get to test myself.
Things like select 3 winners at random (1st, 2nd & 3rd place), without reproducing the same winner etc.

Im up to section 2, chapter 5 of the book and havn't started any of the examples yet, I want to read it through first untill I understand it, then I'll go back and follow it through again, doing as I read which should help me understand it even better.

I am however doing as the book advises and writing down any ideas about what I want my program to do and how it should work which will help me better design and develop my DB.

I'm having some real fun just reading and getting ideas with every new thing I discover PHP & MySQL can do.

[Jack Franklin]

I read a book which seems similar to yours only 14 days ago, and fell in love with PHP. I've developed a CMS alongside someone else, and I love doing it

[weasel]

Yeah... it's very addictive
The more I read, the more little lights go on in my head... "ahh so thats why that's like that" or "so that's what a curly brace does"
I can't wait to finish the book and start doing some examples and some of my own variations.

RE: Your CMS..
yeah, I saw that in your sig in a post I was reading... I visited the site and took a little look.
It sounds very interesting... I was thinking of downloading it and trying it if I had some time over the weekend.

I'm an avid user of CMS's and in particular Joomla!, but I'm always on the look out for a good CMS, something versatile that can perform as more than one type of site.
It's what got me into PHP and web design. Using and modifying CMS's to see how they worked. Now I want to develop my knowledge so that I can modify what I want my way or write what I want to suit my needs.
It's so much easier to get what you want when you can do it yourself.

I have spent waaaay too many hours in forums trying to solve problems or find that module that does what I want and hopefully someone has built it.

For ages I could read code perfectly and understand what it did, but for some reason, I could never write a line lol. Aparently I hear there are lots of people like this out there :/

Good luck with the CMS and hopefully I will get a chance to demo it over the weekend

[JustinStudios]

Welcome to PHP it is a beautiful and exciting world. By the way, I suggest building your scripts in a library fashion as you will not want to rewrite the same things over and over and over again. Also, it helps for your CMS's to have pre-written scripts.

[weasel]

Hey JustinStudios,

Thanks for the welcome.
I read in a post about script libraries.. The poster was talking about intellectual property how he/she designer keeps snippets here and there for reuse like logins, mail that kind of thing to save re-writing them. Then in the contract it states that they do not completely own the code etc...
Seems a good idea to me.

Thanks for the advice

[JustinStudios]

Yeah,
When doing websites for other people you just add in there that you can reuse the code for future projects. Lets you keep using them over and over. I myself usually say, I can reuse the code for future projects, but the design is solely theirs. That usually keeps them happy.

[Jack Franklin]

Originally Posted by weasel

Yeah... it's very addictive


RE: Your CMS..
yeah, I saw that in your sig in a post I was reading... I visited the site and took a little look.
It sounds very interesting... I was thinking of downloading it and trying it if I had some time over the weekend.



Good luck with the CMS and hopefully I will get a chance to demo it over the weekend

If you want chuck me a PM and I'll give you the link.

[whitewizard]

Hi weasel,

I suggest you to check some php frameworks and some template engines. Maybe it would be difficult at the beginning but you will have a lot of benefits in the future.
Good luck and keep your passion alive.

[weasel]

@JustinStudios.. That sounds about right.. pretty much what I was reading.
Many thanks for the tips buddy!

@jackfranklin.. PM on its way

@ whitewizard.. I did some googling on PHP framework and the first result was this:
http://www.phpit.net/article/ten-dif...hp-frameworks/

Also when you say template engine, I notice that link also gives a comparison chart and it does mention template engines in it.
By template engines do you mean something like smarty?

[whitewizard]

- The article you found on google can gave you some hints and those are probably the most known frameworks. With some more google searching you will find new alternatives to these. The most important on a framework is to satisfy your project needs.


- YES, by template engine I refer to something like smarty. An engine which will separate your php code by your layout. This is the meaning of an template engine but not the only one.

[weasel]

I'm glad you said they're are alternatives to smarty
I used to tinker with some CMS's that used smarty and I didn't get on with it too well.
Probably because I didn't understand it.

I will look into the frameworks and template systems

Thanks for the pointers!!!!