Dizkus

Hey all,

I need a little advise from those in the know lol. I am very new to PHP and PHP programming and after using PostNuke for so long i am dying to learn PHP programming in hopes of trying my hand at block and module developement as well as for other things.

Can anyone suggest some good sites that i may be able to get my feet wet with since i am a little strapped for cash at this time and can't really afford any books lolol.

Any help would be appreciated,
Thanks

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"For those who believe no explanation is necessary, for those who do not, none will suffice."

I was exactly in your shoes a few years ago... There's going to be tons of reading, but you can get a lot of PHP education for free. That's what I did, at first. That knowledge coupled with some great support forums allowed me to get enough paid jobs (over time) to pay for Zend.com's super-course.

Virtually everything that Zend taught me "officially" is available for free on the web (albeit not in the same delivery method). If you're willing to surf and read...and most importantly, to ask and listen...you'll be well on your way.

TIP: Wherever possible, check the dates on the material/tips/techniques you're absorbing; there may be functions in the current PHP that already do the stuff you're working so hard to achieve.

php.net/manual - See this as a daily visit rather than a last resort!
phpFreaks.com - Tuts, articles, resources
w3schools.com - Free tutorials. Be sure to hit up the HTML and CSS sections too.
sitepoint.com - Great site; very active support forums.


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Photography | PHP | Other

IMHO hands on is the best (well it was for me). Start making stuff, make a module, or even modify an existing module. YOu will then see how things work together and also be exposed to the code. Start a project! YOu will see lots of people suggesting modules that they need, or even better make a module that you, yourself need. After a few projects things will start to fall into place :)

It's also good to browse the phpclasses.org site - there are lots of good classes there that can be quickly integrated as PostNuke modules. They normally have good example scripts to use as a foundation as well... another bonus here is the fact that you will be exposed to Object orientated programming which is a good way to do things, hell I hardly have to anything to make a module anymore, bascially grab a few libraries, integratge them together and the module is 90% done hahahahaha

-Lobos



edited by: Lobos, Jun 09, 2006 - 03:14 AM

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-Lobos
Professional PHP Framework Services: Concept, Development and Deployment

Alar , Lobos

Thank you both for your replies. I am going to bookmark the sites you both have listed that i don't already have. I have been goping through several sites that i found and they have good information in them i just need to wrap my brain around them and figure out the structure and so forth.

I didn't think that i would have much problem since in the past years i have (way past) i use to work with basic programming and PHP didn't seem much different, in fact it looked easier and more straight forward.

In fact i have already started to get my feet wet a little. Since i am running on Linux I have PHP, MYSQL, Smarty already installed and last night i got the Activestate Komodo IDE for PHP so i can start working with it. Hopefully after some researching and playing around i will be able to get a grasp of it.

Thank you both very much for your advise....i will definately take it to heart.

Take care!

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"For those who believe no explanation is necessary, for those who do not, none will suffice."

I would agree that starting with Modifying an exisiting compliant module. That's how I started in C++, that's how I started with PHP and how I started with the pnAPI.

I have to say that in just a few days I've learned a lot from this site devnetwork.net Only found them a couple days ago but WOW!!! there's a lot there. Something that I really like on there is the Swift Mailer in the code snippets (it has TLS support for PHP) ;) OOOOOO wouldn't that be nice for PN and all other mailing modules ;) (then webmasters could use gmail as their mailing program and not have to rely on other mail servers) :D

There's also a ton of other things there. Really worth looking at.



edited by: tazmon95, Jun 09, 2006 - 06:09 AM

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Member of the PNphpBB Development Team

Thanks for the post on this site tazmon...checking it out now lol. I have been looking through all the sites i can find in relation to PHP, MYSQL etc and trying to absorb as much as i can I'm sure i will be working on something soon lol.

Many thanks!

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"For those who believe no explanation is necessary, for those who do not, none will suffice."

mhalbrook,

I have already been picking at some of the code in one of the modules lol, especially the example on From what i'm seeing it looks easy enough but then my brain is like "What the heck is this!"...that's okay though....i'm a persistent one lol

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"For those who believe no explanation is necessary, for those who do not, none will suffice."

And for PN module development, check here too...

WIKI DevDocs
(Unofficial) pnAPI Reference



edited by: alarconcepts, Jun 10, 2006 - 01:37 AM

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Photography | PHP | Other

Thanks Alar, checked them out and booked marked them also for quick reference

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"For those who believe no explanation is necessary, for those who do not, none will suffice."

Sure thing.

There's some good info at all these sites we've mentioned, but in the rush of how easy PHP is to learn one thing oft overlooked is "planning". Actually, it's not so much overlooked as it is skimmed. =) Some time spent here will save you more time overall than anything else (or at least it does for me!)

Draw up a flow-chart...nothing fancy...just something to help you see the larger picture of what you're trying to achieve...something that can help direct your code & logic. This will make it easier to stay on track and keep you focused on "how does what I'm coding this moment relate to and affect the rest of the project at hand."

Great luck!

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Photography | PHP | Other

Definately great advice alar I have been jotting down some things that i want to try and i am looking at taking a program i found at hotscripts.com and see if i can make it into a module. Its a blogging script which uses a flat file (.txt) to store the information entered into it. Not really a lot to it and if i can figure out how to transfer it to a PN module i think it would be a good start for me.

Will keep everyone up to date on my progress

Many thanks!


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"For those who believe no explanation is necessary, for those who do not, none will suffice."