How important is knowing PHP for a front-end developer?

I'm a front-end developer with experience in html, css, and javascript. Ive learned a bit about PHP through working with wordpress and building themes but I don't know if I need to learn much more as a designer regarding PHP. Is it purely for back-end developers or is it something i should learn more about?

 

A basic knowledge is very handy to have. Learning how to use loops, some formatting functions etc are good things to know.

 

I'm actually taking some time out this festive season to learn php.
Then right after MySQL.
I know basics like includes and enough to get by, though I'd really like to learn them both properly. Like when you have errors in html/css, it's easier to fix them yourself by looking at what you've written than it is to spend hours searching the web for an answer. It'll be the same with php and mysql. Once you know them, the answers will come a lot easier and you'll be able to understand random pieces of code you may wish to implement.

If you've got the time and passion, then I'd say go for it, but be warned it is a lot of learning and will hurt your head for a while till eventually everything will click. Best of luck

 

Right now one of the biggest problems I see in the industry is overspecialization -- to the point that people aren't even qualified to do their 'specialty' because they don't know enough about any of the rest of the process!

The so called "designers" for example pissing out their very pretty but ultimately useless halfwit PSD's usually don't know enough about HTML, CSS, emissive colourspace or accessibility -- leaving them qualified to design just two things, and jack left town. Of course, the entire NOTION of drawing goofy pictures of a website before you have semantic markup of the content and a working CSS layout is putting the cart before the horse and a completely back-assward approach to site development, which is why 99% of the CRAP people vomit up in photoshop and then have the giant brass monkey balls to call a website is ultimately useless and annoying to users, and a massive waste of bandwidth for nothing. That's why you do NOT see PSD jockey bullshit design on any of the major success stories of the Internet. You really think Facebook, E-Bay, Amazon, etc, etc have some dipshit spanking it on the screen in Photoshop for hours on end?

"back end" coders usually don't know enough about HTML or CSS to be having what they write output HTML -- this leaves them crippled should they be paired with a front end coder who has their head wedged up 1997's rump. The real laugh being PHP dev's in this situation when they go "I learned PHP first and don't really know a lot of HTML".... Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!!! If PHP is a hypertext preprocessor, what the blue devil is a PHP dev qualified to do if they don't know HTML?!? As evident from a lot of off the shelf software these days (turdpress, joomla, xenforo) and the stuff hard-coded outside the themes with little if any control over them (like turdpress' endless pointless idiotic classes on EVERYTHING because they are too stupid to grasp inheritance) it becomes readily apparant that a lot of the folks making back end code, thanks to their lack of understanding the front end, wellll are qualified to code just two things, and jack left town.

So what about the man in the middle? The so called 'front end' developer working in HTML and CSS -- you need to know enough about paint programs to take the images from the designer and make them low bandwidth and efficient on the page, and when to be able to kick the PSD jockey in the nerts and give them a double helping of sierra tango foxtrot uniform when they come in the door with their very pretty but ultimately useless bull. You also need to know enough about the back end to realize the less markup you hand over, the easier their job will be -- AND to make sure you don't hand them useless bull that makes them come back to give you a nice swift kick in the junk.

If you don't know how to turn it into something like PHP, how are you making markup that's worth a flying purple fish?

Really the very notion of "designer", "Front end" and "back end" being separate specialties does more harm than good, and leaves pretty much everyone in the process unqualified to do their jobs! All you have to do is look at most of the work vomited up via that process to see just how stupid the results are.... with slow bandwidth wasting megabyte monstrosities built from dozens if not hundreds of separate files, CTCR's in excess of 10:1, and sucking down server time entirely out of developer ineptitude at every point in the process!

 

The nice thing about php is that you can run it on your own machine for testing. Setting up php and mySQL under apache is a skill in and of itself - worth having IMHO. Depending on your os, you may already have php installed! ( OS X or linux )

But then there is the fact that a lot of other languages are coming up on php's heels, and php is $kind $of $ugly compared to say, python.

 

Or you can take a easy shortcut like WAMP or XAMPP. I prefer XAMPP myself.

http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html

Even if their website is EXACTLY the type of manure I was just ranting and raving about...

 

aaaaaaaahahahahahahahaha, I always read nerts in the voice of Cartman, in fact any sentence that has the word Kick and seems like beanbags will follow I immediately start narrating in Cartmans voice.
Besides the humor, the post you made has awesome, super dooper, relevant points that I wish everyone in the industry read, could grasp and put into practice.
As with most website stuff, I've found that it's up to you to learn, the info is out there, just depends if you have the passion. Again, great post mate

It's ironically one of the first things someone wanting to learn should do; set it all up locally. Unfortunately, many don't do it from the get go and hence they're 'spectrum of knowledge' about the field is extremely narrowed.
Also agree with you on $how $ugly $php $echo $me $out is. But it is a great way to grasp the understanding of more common things. I'm a fan of Ruby. Still learning but love the simpleness, they even have a free online mini-course to show you through all of its features.
http://tryruby.org/levels/1/challenges/0

Me too!
I've actually set XAMPP up to run everything as a website using .local in place of a .com
This way I can run any example.local or tester.local and all links are always going to import directly to a site without error.
It was a bit or work learning how to set it up and what the different aspects of code and folders do. But so worth it.
It's been so long since I've used XAMPP without the .local that I wouldn't even know what most people would test their stuff under right out of the box, 127.0.0.1 or localhost:8080 or something else entirely?
Either way, huge fan of XAMPP.

 

Awesome post deathshadow
I work in a development studio, however. In my opinion, design concepts are more important to know than the actual code. You can paint a very useable, functional website by understanding design concepts, user experience design, etc. A good programmer can build that user-oriented design into a beautiful website.

 

That REALLY hinges on what you mean by "design concepts" -- if you mean things like elastic layout, dynamic layout, responsive layout, then yes... If you mean the knowledge that fixed height content areas, perfect fixed width elements across a content area, and a host of other decisions that should be avoided so as to not piss on the first three, then sure.

Problem is, I've never seen anyone who dicks around in a paint program as "design" actually manage to grasp ANY of those! While what they do can often be quite pretty, they are usually a waste of bandwidth and quite often ultimately useless to a lot of users.

LIKE MYSELF with my 8514/120dpi/Large Fonts/125%/Win7+ Medium Fonts/whateverTheHellThey'reCallingItThisWeek and other accessibility needs...

To me, painting a pretty picture is NOT proper site design. MOST of the concepts of accessible responsive layout simply cannot be done dicking around in a paint program; it is effectively a completely back-assward way to put the cart before the horse. I've NEVER seen a site where you let some 'artist' draw a pretty picture first, where the resulting site wasn't some fat bloated idiotic useless inaccessible train wreck -- usually featuring at least TWO out of the trifecta of /FAIL/ at web design.

The trifecta of /FAIL/ being:
1) fixed width layout
2) fixed metric (px) fonts on content areas
3) illegible color contrasts

The first one is ALWAYS halfwit BS, and has ALWAYS been halfwit BS for a decade and a half... the latter two just reek of "WCAG, what's that?!?" The very notion of dicking around in something meant to push pixels around is much akin to other broken methodologies like WYSIWYGS -- for the simple reason that what you see isn't going to be what anyone else gets.

Semantic markup of content of value, bent to your will using CSS to build and design the layout should ALWAYS be the first and second steps... you then want to bring in the PSD jockey to do a paintover with the understanding that EVERYTHING on the page is fluid, then sure... but really these days if you actually HAVE content of value, understand how to use CSS3, then you don't need to be using a paint program for anything more than making icons and cropping your picture content into thumbs.

Which to reiterate, I've NEVER seen a layout built from the PSD first approach that wasn't an inaccessible bandwidth wasting pile of shit. Years ago I used to just STFU and plod on letting the PSD jockey have their way even if the site wasn't useable to ME -- NO MORE! These ignorant dipshits need a good swift kick in the junk.

Hence the reason all the REAL success stories of the Internet -- facebook, amazon, ebay, google -- quite obviously don't let the PSD Jockeys do anything more than futz around with the logos on their sites -- MAYBE an occasional bit of trim in one corner?

But then the term "design studio" makes me cringe the moment Web development is involved... since... well...