I want to learn PHP, what is best resource

I am a windows programmer, c++ and Delphi. But want to learn PHP, what is the best resource, online or book. Thanks.

 

Do a search on this forum for "learn php" - this question gets asked so often.

Brew

 

I find php.net very confusing. Use a simple beginners tutorial like tizag.com

 

I would suggest to start with some kind of a book to have good foundation and then look at php.net

Go to amazon and look for PHP and get a book that has many 5 starts, I checked now and probably PHP 6 and MySQL 5 for Dynamic Web Sites is the best one. (wowa, there is PHP 6 already?)

 

I agree. php.net shouldn't be your first stop to learn php. It's a great resource for people that already know the basics of the language, but it's poorly designed for teaching you how to use it.

As for a book, don't bother buying one. You'll quickly outgrow the book's narrative, and at that point a free resource like php.net is perfect.

When I learned I used a freely available book - Practical PHP Programming. You can find the latest copy at http://hudzilla.org/phpwiki/. Work through that until you feel comfortable writing your own scripts... and then look to php.net or forums to fill in the gaps.

Coming from C++ it should be pretty easy. There are some differences in syntax, but the concepts are all the same. I used to work with C++ too and found it a very easy transition.

Good luck,
- Walkere

 

there ar a lot of e-books , examples on the net try search "learning php" on google
and if you are programmer , i think it is easy to learn php for you ,

 

You can start with tizag.com, they have a good beginners guide to php. PHPFreaks.com also have quite a bit of nice stuff. You can also find tutorials at pixel2life.com which are good for seeing how people perform certain tasks.

I have a ton of ebooks (some were free) that I've collected from around the net that I can send you if you PM me, they were the biggest help for me.

 

I found phpvideotutorials.com very helpful. It's a nice way to learn watching someone else do it

 

I found this site OK, but the guy who presents it does talk a lot of irrelevant nonsense. Its 50% PHP, 50% nonsense.

 

Haha i would say 80% PHP, 20% nonsense. He's just a friendly guy thats goes off on one.

 

I agree he is a friendly guy, but going off one one irritates me alot.

I already am decent with PHP and watched them for inspiration on creating my own tutorials - maybe thats why my boredom threshold was very low.

 

I'd start with some paper in your hands, I did it also that way.

Php actually was the first language I learned apart from some messing in Pascal and lua. First thing I did was grab a good book and write pseudo and php code next to eachother to get the basic programming logarithm.

 

w3schools.com can be good to start learning php.

 

i second tizag, great resource...

handy for quick reference as well

 

Also its worth looking up lynda.com tutorials. They are expensive but I am sure enterprising people can find "discounted" versions if they look hard enough!

 

you can download free pdf ebooks at http://www.downloadfreepdf.com

Regards

Alex