So, I want to learn PHP, HTML and CSS. Where do I start?

Dev!l

Dev!l

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Feb 5, 2010
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I want to learn PHP, HTML and CSS. That is besides creating professional videos (Sony Vegas?) and graphic designing (Photoshop).

Any good resources you would recommend?
How long do you think it would take me to be able to pick up these languages?
Any particular order I should learn these languages?
Any pitfalls I should avoid?
Any tools that you recommend?

I'm open to any other suggestions as well. Any insight would be great. How has your experience been learning these languages and for how long have you been learning them?
 


dchuk said:
Updated: Who Needs University? The Best Nettuts+ Screencast Training Courses | Nettuts+

start with #10 series, then bounce around as you wish
Click to expand...

+rep
Thanks a bunch. I'll look into it. Learning and perfecting languages and softwares is almost limitless right now. I have no idea where to draw the line.

Edit: I want to start from scratch. Although I know a little here and there I want to get my basics right. This looks like an intermediate course (as is suggested on the page). Anything for beginners?
 
W3Schools Online Web Tutorials - Great resource for learning HTML, CSS, PHP, etc.
Tizag Tutorials - Also some good tutorials, especially for some quick and easy PHP lessons.

If you are serious, after reading those two sites, I'd suggest purchasing "Stylin' With CSS" to learn some great XHTML and CSS concepts. That's what I used a few years back to really take my knowledge of CSS to another level. It got me out of some bad habits and I haven't looked back.

I'd also suggest getting "Building Dynamic Websites with PHP and MySQL" from Sitepoint.com. Kevin Yank wrote it and it's pretty easy to follow. Pay attention specifically to the "custom tags" section there because it's great for making some mad lib sites with if you want to make your own admin area to control several sites at once.
 
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Rexibit said:
W3Schools Online Web Tutorials - Great resource for learning HTML, CSS, PHP, etc.
Tizag Tutorials - Also some good tutorials, especially for some quick and easy PHP lessons.

If you are serious, after reading those two sites, I'd suggest purchasing "Stylin' With CSS" to learn some great XHTML and CSS concepts. That's what I used a few years back to really take my knowledge of CSS to another level. It got me out of some bad habits and I haven't looked back.

I'd also suggest getting "Building Dynamic Websites with PHP and MySQL" from Sitepoint.com. Kevin Yank wrote it and it's pretty easy to follow. Pay attention specifically to the "custom tags" section there because it's great for making some mad lib sites with if you want to make your own admin area to control several sites at once.
Click to expand...

Thanks =D
I'll look through these. Repetty rep.
 
nettuts has some awesome articles,
I'd get some basics at w3s and go through some tutorials at nettuts

tip: when you are going through these tutorials, actually install php on your computer and type out the code yourself, execute it, and check that the results match
 
Also if you play around in Dreamweaver it helps you understand html tags a little bit better. I suggest learning HTML first because i think it is the foundation for everything else. CSS and PHP make coding a lot quicker i heard.

You can check out HTML Professional Project by John Gosney or any other book from the Library. Its a pretty thick, but simple book if you like to look at physical pages instead of a computer screen.

I am in the same boat..Still learning HTML and CSS..Keep playing around with it and you will learn to enjoy the benefit.
 
Any good resources you would recommend?
the internet is your friend! you've just started a perfect place, and some good advice to - USE A FRIEND or a FRIEND OF A FRIEND

Get a hosting account, and start playing around with ftp'ing some basic html.

How long do you think it would take me to be able to pick up these languages?
that's a loaded question, it would help if you had a friend that knew these skills and ask him/her to teach you some basics.

Any particular order I should learn these languages?
1. html 2. css 3. php

Any pitfalls I should avoid?
learning windows

Any tools that you recommend?
dreamweaver was mentioned here, that's what the base designers use - stay away from frontpage (anyone on the internet who knows anything about html, never uses it.) I can't say enough about dreamweaver, it an absolutely perfect tool to begin using to format html pages.

do not get fustrated! publish early and publish often - who cares what it looks like, it's your first webpage - just push on and create more.
 
Gee for being a "Resource, Technology and Operational Consultant" you don't sound all that bright or knowledgeable or both.

Dreamweaver for reals? How the hell do you plan to learn to code using that? Dreamweaver is meant for those who can't code.

Those who can code would never waste their time with such an application. If you're looking for a good IDE that is free and cross platform check out Netbeans.

How long will it take you to pick up the languages? That's complicated. It doesn't sound like you have any programming background what-so ever so the answer is a long time. Several months for sure until you probably have a limited grasp on how they all go together and work, even then you'll be surfing the net just trying to find code snippets that will do the job for you. Years until you're proficient to the point that you can bend them efficiently to your will.

It's a long journey and PHP is one of the easiest languages out there. This is NOT an overnight journey.

You probably will, at times, be stuck on a single problem for months at a time until you find just the right bit of information to bring your understanding to that next level.

As for which way you should learn it, doesn't really matter as much. HTML and CSS is one side and the other is PHP. I personally would recommend getting a base of PHP first but I don't think it really matters all that much.

Lastly since most of the time you'll be deploying code to a Linux server it would be best to start getting balls deep in Linux. Install an easier distro like Ubuntu and slam your head into that for a while. Get comfortable with setting up and configuring Apache and configuring PHP. There are times when you deploy something to a webserver and *gasp* it wont work right because the configuration is different from your development platform. Believe me you'll thank me later.

There, that should keep you busy for the next few years. Enjoy the ride. Remember this, a bad coder spends 90% of his time writing his code and 10% actually thinking about it. A good coder spends 90% of his time thinking about his code and about 10% of the time actually writing it.
 
^^^^ another option is notepad :D

seriously though, if you want to LEARN then go for coding (typing i mean). Dreamweaver is for guys like me, who like drag-drop features and are dumb in HTML coding. Tools like these kill the learning ability. Try to stay away from them.

As for guides sams series or wiley is good. Also try lynda or any other video tuts. They will demonstrate step-by-step how to execute a program (PHP etc.). You can also google or YT it.
 
Thanks a bunch for all your inputs. I do run a few websites myself and they all run on WP. I've messed around a little bit with the themes to make my website look static, so I know a little bit here and there. Though, I would still like to start from scratch because I'm not sure if I have covered all basics and I know bits and pieces of PHP. You actually can't count it because all I've been doing is deleting a few lines of coding and maybe adding links here and there. I've heard a lot about w3s, so I'll check that out and a video series is always helpful so I'll probably go with Lynda.
Also, I found some old tutorials and series by Lynda I think, maybe 3-4 years old. I'm guessing nothing much has changed since then, so I can go ahead and grab a copy of that right?
 
w3schools.com
i will suggest you to not look anywhere else.
You will find things practical and explained in a short but nice way.
No useless talks about the things there and
first learn
html
then css
then
JS
then
my sql
and then
php
and then ajax
 
jamesvick said:
Dreamweaver is for guys like me, who like drag-drop features and are dumb in HTML coding. Tools like these kill the learning ability. Try to stay away from them.
Click to expand...

I haven't touched the design-view in Dreamweaver in years. Don't think that just because you don't use one feature of a tool that others shouldn't use the tool at all. It's just ignorant. You don't have to always use design-view and WISIWYG your way in order to use Dreamweaver.

The code-view in Dreamweaver is great. If Eclipse were as fast to work in as Dreamweaver's code-view then I'd use that, but it doesn't have the auto-complete features that I like from Dreamweaver for HTML, PHP, and Javascript.
 
brexinova0 said:
w3schools.com
i will suggest you to not look anywhere else.
You will find things practical and explained in a short but nice way.
No useless talks about the things there and
first learn
html
then css
then
JS
then
my sql
and then
php
and then ajax
Click to expand...

I don't want to die learning all of this :P
 
Rage9 said:
Dreamweaver for reals? How the hell do you plan to learn to code using that? Dreamweaver is meant for those who can't code.

Those who can code would never waste their time with such an application. If you're looking for a good IDE that is free and cross platform check out Netbeans.
Click to expand...

I disagree with you about DW. It's code complete is great (especially CSS), one of the main reasons I still use it. I never work in design view though, I'm guessing that's what you're driving at. Outside of that, I use Notepad++ for pretty much everything else. Will check out Netbeans though. Looks pretty good.
 
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