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I tried doing tutorials but it is unorganized and unstructured, where can I learn PHP from beginner to master? I’m looking for a site like http://www.w3chools.com, but somehow I feel it is incomplete, specially when it comes to more advanced functions.
I know some basics but I wouldn’t be able to for example make a secure online webstore, and I seem to be stuck at this point, how / where should I proceed?
I started 7 years ago. In my personal experience, your road to programming will look something like this:
For HTML (and CSS), I started by using a graphical editor at (then freewebs.com) webs.com that allowed me to add code snippets. I used some random GeoCities site (may it rest in peace) to look up things. Now, use Google or Bing.
Then, I got Jeffrey Zeldman‘s book, Designing with Web Standards. I followed through the book, typing out the code in notepad. Try to understand what the code does.
Do yourself a favor, use Notepad++ or Programmer’s Notepad. They support automatic tabbing for neater code. It will make you a better and more sane coder in the long run.
Another thing I used to do was look at people’s code by right clicking in my browser and hitting “view source”.
This only gets you the HTLM/CSS after the PHP has been run and the Javascript before it was run. Google Chrome is good for analyzing scripts because of the debugging capabilities. (Don’t worry about that yet though.)
Javascript was an adventure back then. Now, we have jQuery. Start with that or a similar framework. This can be researched online. I have never bought a Javascript book. I do have an ancient one from Visual Quickstart that I used to learn what a method looks like. Beyond that, the particular book in question is
an outdated rag.
To learn PHP/MySQL you can get a book. The two languages are often put together so finding books that show you how to use them in tandem should be a snap. I used O’reilly books for PHP.
I don’t like the online PHP reference so much, because when I’m testing I don’t always have internet. I use a virtual server setup on my machine. Look into that when you are ready to start learning PHP and MySQL.
The last thing to remember is that web standards are always changing, but don’t get too crazy about it. when I started, XHTML was all the rage and now everyone is talking about HTML5. I still use XHTML as do many others. It goes to show that things move at different paces for everyone.
Good luck, I hope I helped!
EDIT: Geoff Adams pretty much sums up my post – Play around the invest in books. And, it will take time. I’m till nowhere near perfect.