Beginner in PHP- Help My Confused Head

Of course you're going to be confused if you've only been at it for 1 day!

Learning PHP is just like learning any foreign language. Don't expect to be comfortable with even the basics for at least a few weeks. It's a vast language (there are at least hundreds, if not thousands of different functions), so you will never get to the point to where you know all of it (nor will you need to). After you get the basics down, just learn whatever you need to know for each project at hand, and go from there.

2 big things that really helped me during the learning process...

1) Don't just read about how to do something... but actually do it yourself (even if it's something really basic). Install XAMPP on your hard drive... that way you can easily test and experiment with everything you read about, which will make it easier to understand how everything works in a "live" environment. It also helps to use a "code friendly" text editor like NetBeans or Notepad++.

2) If something doesn't make sense, cross-reference it between at least 2 or 3 other sources (different websites, books, etc). Often times one source will explain it in a way that doesn't make any sense at all, but then the 2nd or 3rd source will explain it in such a way that it "clicks".

That said, I thought Tizag was one of the better resources for learning the basics.

Good luck!

Hi,

I suggest going for a step by step tutorial of PHP. As Brandon already explained, its more like learning a foreign language. Here's a learning trail that you can follow:

0) Make a commitment to yourself that you will give X numbers of hours in learning PHP everyday/every week.

1) Go to PHP: PHP Manual - Manual. This manual contains almost everything you need to get started.

2) Read the getting started chapter first. Skip the installation part for now, and instead of that, go to XAMPP and install it on your machine. Installing XAMPP is quite easy (click-next).

3) Go back to tutorial and start with Language Basics chapter and move on. Try example codes and tutorials to support your learning.

I would recommend buying the book "Head first PHP and MySQL". All the books in this series are awesome. When you are done with this, read Professional PHP5 book.

And if you get stuck in something, this section is the right place to post your problems

Mohit

Hello thehorizon,

I know exactly what you're feeling like and how confusing it can be to start learning a programming language.
Let me tell you how I got into it. It was about 5 years ago and my girlfriend wanted a homepage she could easily update.
I wanted very much to give her something like that as a present although I had only little experience in webdesign and none in PHP.
I used my wish to create something she likes to finally create a simple cms in PHP.
Of course it wasn't that great but it was a beginning and it got me into PHP and showed me how nice it is to master it.

What I want to tell you with this is: Don't waste too much time on tutorials, that's won't bring you much progress in your development with the programming language.
Rather learn the basics and then head out and try to program something you like, can be a simple script.
In the process of creating it you will get into difficulties but in the end you will solve them and THAT'S what makes you learn, not reading tutorials about it.
Having fun with your scripts is the best way to learn.
And after you finished your script, you can expand it and as your script expands in functionality, so your knowledge and skill does.

Also for wordpress, read the wordpress codex, and the book "Smashing Wordpress". I'm reading it right now and it is pretty good, although it is really above my level I can still understand it somewhat.

But if your a beginner, you really need to learn the basics of programming in general. I took an intro to programming in C++ class on my community college and know the basic fairly well, but I'm still far away from really knowing how to program in PHP.

Another great resource is Lynda.com. Go through the PHP essential training, I think it's more geared people who are already experienced programmers, but I found it really helpful, it goes through building a basic CMS in PHP.

Just code what you want, passion is important there and with the chellange you will grow. For almost every task you can find code snippets in the net so you just need to understand and combine them but the important factor is that you want to make it.
For the functions use google => PHP + What you want to do like PHP get random index from array.
Wish you best luck in your progress, if you have additional questions, please ask.

I think you need learning about HTML, MySQL before learn PHP.