I have googled this many times. And I have learned quickly that learn better from people. Would anyone be willing to help me get started with this? Maybe show me how to make a simple application.
http://www.hwg.org/services/classes/phpclass.html I have take many classes here. Very helpful. I am taking the PHP class starting may 30. Its $150
Buy some good books on coding. I recommend The PHP Cookbook. Although it's outdated and has a few errors, "Create Dynamic Web Pages Using PHP and MySQL" worked wonders for me, got me off to a great start.
I also recommend purchasing a couple of books, at least for reference. If you don't have the cash to shell out for any, see if your local library works with http://www.netlibrary.com. From there you can search a database and check out books using your local library card number. To be honest though I find its easier just to use their e-books, great for quick referencing and not expensive at all. They have a lot of great php/mysql titles available in electronic format too. Most of what I know came from trial and error and reading digitalpoint. If you don't have one already, there's a good tutorial that got me through installing a test webserver on my local machine. http://www.ricocheting.com/server/ Aside from having a test webserver that I can use without uploading files everytime I change something, it helped me understand how php/mysql talk to each other. Start off with a few hello world tutorials, learn about echoing, looping (and the different ways to loop through), querying mysql and how to retrieve the results, and when you've got a lot of the core commands down you can start looking at how to manipulate the data and display it as you see fit. Learn the ins and outs of CSS, even if you're a fan of tables, use CSS for your design/colour schemes. Not only is it useful to use stylesheets, but calling divs in one line of code instead of formatting 10 tables over and over again keeps your code a lot cleaner. With php/mysql it can be easy to get lost in your code starting out, so keep the basic design coding as clean as possible. Get your hands dirty, trying your own stuff. When you hit a wall, you'll often find that a quick search here or on google often brings you about 100 other people who hit that same wall and just as many people helping them over it. Good luck, I started last December and I've got 2 full fledged content sites up and running off php/mysql/and recently ajax and a couple of sites in the works. Just takes some time to learn is all.
Crimson Editor is definitely a great program but it doesn't seem to get any support anymore (at least, not from the guy who wrote the program). Alternatives like EditPlus and NotePad Plus are still active, you should check those out instead.
i think you have to at least read a book/tutorial on php and then try to learn from codes of wordpress and some from joomla along the way. reading a book would give you the basics and fundamentals of php while the codes will give you a concrete example of doing things. thanks for those who gave insights. i'll try crimson editor and notepad plus.