Learning PHP...

[reaction]

Hi,

I was wondering how long it would take me to learn the basics of PHP. I am an experienced programmer (2+ years) and support technician (6+ years).

I've got a new site to set up, and would like to include a prescripted header on every page, preferably with a single line of code.

If anyone could direct me to a good (1 page?) resource I would be very grateful.

Thanks,
Keith

[Shrill]

Hi Keith,

With 2 years programming experience behind you, I don't think you will have a big problem at all learning PHP.

PHP is quite an evolved programming language and includes a lot of great functions built in that save you loads of time. It is easy to pick up straight away and is great for beginners and experts and has a very good learning curve... it is similar to C++ in some of it's syntax, but with the easy of BASIC for very fast development time.

Check out: www.php.net which is the official site for the language.

and check out: http://www.hotscripts.com/PHP/Scripts_and_Programs/index.html for a great resource that will get you started with some coding... it's all freely downloadable source code that you can check out and learn from.

http://www.evilwalrus.com and http://www.spoono.com/tutorials/php/ are also good.

For the particular problem you mentioned; "include a prescripted header on every page" ... all you would have to do is use include("header.php"); within the HTML of a .php page and it would work fine.

Hope this helps...

[titchlou]

Really depends what you mean by 'the basics' - I have only been learning properly for a few months and I have made a discussion board for a site with some help from others to sort the bits i couldn't fathom. I have used includes for sometime though to allow me to use a single page and include it on lots of pages (similar to the way frames work but without the frame).

There are hundreds of books and web sites about it www.php.net www.phpfreaks.com being 2 off the top of my head.

[reaction]

Thanks titchlou and shrill,

I will definately go to all those websites, I want to make my new website easier to maintain than the previous.

I'm going for a 2 day holiday now (:D), but i'll reply asap.

Keith