My first thought of learning PHP [Hypertext Preprocessor] was that this going to be much more complex than learning HTML and CSS. As I am learning a coding language on my own I decided to retake the Honey & Mumford learning styles questionnaire to help me decide how I should learn PHP. The results were astonishing as it was even spread between all the learning styles. At first the results made it difficult on my approach to learning PHP. In the end I decided to try and learn PHP in many different ways.
My first port of call was to read the Build Your Own Database Driven Web Site Using PHP & MySQL book by Sitepoint. This was recommended by one of my fellow students who read Sitepoint books regularly. I found the book really easy to follow and it really gave me a great introduction into using PHP. The chapters in the book were like a step by step guide into PHP which really impressed me. It even helped me installed the local sever that is needed to test PHP and MySQL pages. I did also try to read PHP 6 and MySQL 5 for Dynamic Web Sites: Visual QuickPro Guide, but I felt that the book did not have as many features as the Sitepoint so I decided to stop reading that particular book.
Before I embarked on PHP tutorials on the internet I decided with the Sitepoint book to try out some PHP. At first I felt frustrated because I was trying to make subtraction using PHP, but I seemed to always get an error page. Once I calmed down and looked at the code I found out that I used had a spelling mistake with the subtraction variable.
Internet tutorials were the next stage for me to learn PHP. Tim Stringer gave me a great website [www.tizag.com] which had some great tutorials on PHP. This was unlike any other tutorials on PHP that I had seen. I found it more useful than the others because it also explain how the strings,variables,echo and other functions were been using to create your PHP page. After I undertook this tutorial I built my first contact form in PHP. I had been borrowing contact form scripts for my websites in the first year, so to be able to create a contact form script made me within myself. Now I feel that I have achieved something I would never think of this time last year.
Trying to think out of the box to learning PHP I looked at Youtube as a possible way to learn PHP. My theory with Youtube would be that you can see what the person is actually doing rather reading the information given. This should be able to show that a tutorial has actually been successful. However when I did try to understand how the person was using PHP it was too quick to know what the tutorial was doing. This frustrated me as I felt that this could be a great way to learn a new coding language. Youtube is no doubt a new way of how to learn, but I reckon that sticking to reading text at this current time is the right way to learn complicated coding languages.
With the tutorials on the internet and the Sitepoint book I started to further learn what PHP can really do. Experimenting with the code is the best way for me to learn, so I decided to learn how the code is used for in different areas of PHP. I was fascinated in how PHP can be used. Getting error messages does not throw me back, it gives me a challenge which I thrive on with code.
Being sceptical on tutorials in the past I have now realised that you just have to look far and wide to find a good tutorial. Once you do then you know who to trust to provide a good tutorial on whatever you are learning. Reading books in the past have been boring for myself, but I think that the Sidepoint book has change my opinions on books due to it being very easy to understand. With the wide range of possibilities of learning PHP, I reckon that it caters for most people’s ideal way of learning.
With the learning of PHP all out of the way I hope that I can now go and create my two page website containing only PHP. It has not been fun all the time, but I have enjoyed it immensely. I feel that I made the right decision to learn PHP because the possibilities are endless.
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