Learning PHP

Gu3rr1lla

Can anyone recommend sites or books to learn how to make a website/CMS using PHP. I wasted my money on PHP for Dummies which just teaches what i already know but never teaches how to actually make a website with that coding knowledge. Cheers

Kenno90

i don't get you , do you mean you know how to use php but don't know how to make websites , in that case you need to learn Html

Gu3rr1lla

Kenno90 wrote: »

i don't get you , do you mean you know how to use php but don't know how to make websites , in that case you need to learn Html

I mean the php dummies book i have teaches me how to use loops and statements, strings, numbers, arrays. I know most of this already from knowing other languages but the book doesnt teach how to use that knowledge and go and make a CMS and how to install it in a sql database. That sort of stuff. (i know how to use html and css). I would love to know how to use php to create like a wordpress or a cushyCMS type site.

S.M.B.

As always, I'd recommend the sitepoint range of books. I just find their series very useful.

Build Your Own Database Driven Website Using PHP & MySQL

The example they work through is a site that users can upload jokes to and admin can edit/delete etc.

Not exactly what you are looking for but you should be able to adapt the code to fit your needs.

kevteljeur

Gu3rr1lla wrote: »

I mean the php dummies book i have teaches me how to use loops and statements, strings, numbers, arrays. I know most of this already from knowing other languages but the book doesnt teach how to use that knowledge and go and make a CMS and how to install it in a sql database. That sort of stuff. (i know how to use html and css). I would love to know how to use php to create like a wordpress or a cushyCMS type site.

You could try looking at the code for an existing one, such as Wordpress. I've built a basic CMS myself, having learned from the guys I worked with in building Enterprise level CMS systems. The problem is that there are so many ways to do it, and the rights and wrongs of how you should do it are conceptual as much as practical. What is right for Wordpress is wrong for Mambo, because they have a different target audience.

I shelved my own ideas because I saw that what I needed had already been done. There was no point in writing a whole new one. There are enough CMS systems out there written in PHP that you can not only choose between ones for different needs, but well-written ones and badly-written ones in each segment.

One piece of advice that might help, is that the DB design is all important. The code itself isn't too hard to write. But if you don't get your DB structure right for what you want, and your logic for how to get what's in the DB translated to what you know as a website, then you're stuffed. In fact, you can even just design the DB really well and use a Framework to fill in all the bits in between, but I suspect that you need to do it yourself for the learning part.