learning php stuff

Perhaps http://www.w3schools.com/php/default.asp and http://www.php.net/manual/en/ .

A decent book does a lot too, but those two might be good enough for starters... in fact, you'll be coming back to php.net to check the docs anyway, so it could be a good place for you to start.
Depends on how much programming experience you already have.
 
just going through the w3schools ones now..but i dont find them all that useful. Yes they introduce you to the world of php, but i keep finding myself, particulary with the first few tutorials, what is the point of doing this? Surely this can be achieved using simple html. I guess i dont know what those commands can be used for later on in php to know that they're worth knowing...thats what i find confusing about those tutorials.

i'll go into town tomorow and see what books are avaliable in whsmiths or something.

As for programming knowledge - very little. I dont know c+, c#, vb or anything..
 
Learn Perl. No seriously. If you can write perl you can write PHP. There are a few differences, but most of the basic concepts are the same. You can even use perl to do the job of php if you want (not that I'm recommending this).
Perl is a *VERY* good data cruncher. So is PHP but is integrally bound with the serverside html output.

The oreilly book and php.net are my bibles, but then I've been writing Perl and C and PHP for yonks.

php has similarities to what can be achieved in Java. Both push out HTML for the web browser to use. The difference is that php is run on the server and pushes out complete HTML pages (assumptions made here), java runs on the client. Java scripts are part of the HTML page sent to the browser which get interpreted so are inherently insecure, but can be very useful. php only pushes what "you" the "programmer" wants the end user to see.

PHP is really good for processing data that resides on the server, and using it constructively in web pages.
Its limitiation is that when you want to change the page by clicking on a button, the request has to go back to the server to be interpreted and a new html page sent back to the browser.

If you look at this page (view source) then you'll see that it is a combination of HTML and java. You wont see any PHP lines. The most you'll see is something lile "href=index.php". Thats because php has been used to construct the page.

HTH
 
theMusicMan said:
Try this book from Amazon.
Click to expand...

Only problem are the reviews on there..they dont seem to indicate its a good book at all.

Milestone said:
If you are wanting buy a book then the O'Reilly books are pretty good. http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learnphp5/

or the Sams teach yourself in 24 hours series are always a good starting point.

Having said that there is so much free stuff on t'internet these days, a quick search for php tutorial on google brought up loads of matches.
Click to expand...

The last one looks to be good.

From what i believe, php5 isn't fully functional across the internet, and i dont think it is on my website hosts. I did enquire about this and they said security issues have made them decide to hold off from installing php5 till a later date.

Thanks for the help so far. I wil buy a book or 2, will look in whsmiths tomorow, see what they have, i can look through the books themselves too.

Any good online tutorials apart from w3schools and php.net?

:)
 
surrealillusions said:
From what i believe, php5 isn't fully functional across the internet, and i dont think it is on my website hosts. I did enquire about this and they said security issues have made them decide to hold off from installing php5 till a later date.
Click to expand...

It's true that some webhosts don't support php for security reasons, but most of the main UK hosts certainly support it these days.
 
Milestone said:
It's true that some webhosts don't support php for security reasons, but most of the main UK hosts certainly support it these days.
Click to expand...
:shrug:nearly all webhosts provide PHP on their hosting accounts. This application (vBulletin) runs on PHP - as do a myriad of BB forum applications (IPB, PHPBB et al), many gallery scripts run on PHP (Coppermine, Gallery2, 4Images, Photopost), there are a plethora of apps out there running using PHP (Mambo, Joomla, Wordpress etc).

The only other alternative is Windows hosting running ASP and SQL Server.

I think you'd find it hard to locate a webhost that doesn't want to run PHP.:thinking:

As for the book... was just a suggestion, found quickly on Amazon after I searched for you; I didn't think of reading the reviews for you sorry!! ... you will find google will yield many results. Only trying to help.
 
theMusicMan:

you're not quite right there, many support Perl cgi scripts, Python to a lesser extent, Ruby on Rails is sort of popular these days too. Java jsp are available on some hosts, usually the expensive ones, in my experience.
Anyway, there's lots of free alternatives to PHP, but I find PHP to be very comfortable, it does its job rather well, if one avoids mistakes, of course.

Btw., most of the hosts seem to be using security as an excuse for not offering PHP 5 and I think that's a rubbish excuse, as there are ways to make a secure PHP 5 installation.

You don't even have to use MySQL if you want to stay free. There's still PostgreSQL, Firebird and SQLite.
 
^^

My points re PHP being in reference to the earlier posts :7 and :9.

My points re suggesting a book being in reference to :7 and :8.

You will find that all the current webhosts who offer those applications you mention, also absolutely offer PHP - without question. The alternative if PHO is not offered is likely to be a Windows server.

If there are webhosts out there who won't offer PHP and use 'security' as the validation for not doing, then I doubt they will be in the webhosting business for very long. I'd say 95% + of Linux webhosts offer PHP.
 
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