PHP, MySQL ... where to start?

mehuk

mehuk

mehuk

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Looking for a bit of advice really.

Fancy teaching myself a bit more indepth knowledge of web development and programming and as such am looking for some good books to purchase.

The thing is though, as much as I read things... I need to have the practical stuff available as well, so any book suggestions ideally come with examples for me to follow/tests for me to complete.. as otherwise it will go in one eye and out of my bum :D

PHP I believe would be a good start... then maybe MySQL as well for the database stuff as I know I can pull stuff from a SQL database and display it onto a website via PHP.

Any other suggestions welcome.. maybe Javascript as well? Something like that, so I can dabble in making Apps or something.

All help appreciated.
 
Best series of books is the Head First books.

From the first chapter you will be creating code and building things, it then explains what you are doing and why. I've had a few from them that I've leant out to family and friends and they all love them.

They also provide all the sample code on the website for you to download and play with!
 
I was under the belief that w3schools was a complete waste of space, showing not only out of date information but also incorrect information.
 
AHarvey said:
I was under the belief that w3schools was a complete waste of space, showing not only out of date information but also incorrect information.
Click to expand...

Correct, and frankly I am surprised it took 8 posts for someone to recommend the PHP Manual. Which is something you will use when learning PHP probably daily.
 
The php manual is very good and lots of users have kindly left examples of the use of each function too, which can be very helpful.

But I'd imagine it's a bit overwhelming for a php beginner. Once you've worked through a good beginners book it should become your bible though!
 
Think of something you wanna build... and do it. For me it was a very basic login system, then user management, then stat recorder

Google around for tuts. Learn the basics, google what you don't understand. More and more video tutorials popping up on youtube too.
 
I always find it easier to think of a project (nothing too ambitious) and learn by developing that. It also helps if you know any profession coders as their input is invaluable!
 
burrell said:
What would you recommend then?
Click to expand...

That website recommends

You should learn from (and recommend) these more reputable sources:

Opera Web Standards Curriculum covers the basics of web standards-based design in HTML and CSS.

Google's HTML, CSS, and Javascript from the Ground Up presents the basics of web development with video tutorials presented by Google's expert web developers.

SitePoint is a pretty good reference for HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Their documentation always mentions feature support across different browsers, and describes known browser bugs.

The W3C, itself, has a wiki-based general Learn page as well as an HTML element reference.

The MDC (Mozilla's Doc Center) takes over at intermediate CSS and covers JavaScript better than anyone.
The MDC is also a wiki (little known fact), which means we, as knowledgeable web developers, can add or change information so the pages are as effective and comprehensive as possible.
Click to expand...
 
Cheers all,

Just ordered a a couple of the Head First books (PHP, MYSQL and a Java one) - also got the one recomended by Uncle Ruckus for 5.50 used... cant grumble at that.
 
Purchased book one and two (listed above) on the 20th, they arrived today. God almighty I didn't realise they'd be this big! (That's what she said).

I'm going to start with the Head First PHP book because it seems a little more beginner friendly, I'll post back and maybe create a new topic on the subject of learning PHP and MySQL.

Thanks for creating this topic and pushing me to get these! :D
 
PHP? Really?? Horrible language, learn python and django instead; I know there are a lot of Ruby devs near me too. There's money in experienced .net devs too.

If you learn PHP you'll have to compete with most kids coming out of colleges and unis that learnt it for the last 2-3 years. It's a server side scripting language and it'll teach you important lessons, but I'd dump it once you've learnt those, and go for something else.

If you cared to take the time to look into PHP you'd see all the issues that there are with the language :(
 
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