Learning PHP and MySQL - Decent Projects?

StateMachine

hey all, well this is my first post and my first stop was the coding forum, not a great first impression but hey

I'm a C++ coder normally but since every frigging coding company near me has gone into liquidation here in the past few months I've decided to go down the old web programming route since there seems to be endless jobs there locally

since I normally like learning by doing what would you say would be a decent portfolio for this sorta thing to work towards?

i'm liking the similarites between php and C++ so i'd like to just delve straight into a fairly major project and learn that way, preferably one that shows off the main skills a company would want in someone (Already used to programming object-oriented black-box code and already used a fair few design patterns so that's no problem either)

cheers all

Jonathan

You could try interfacing with a big website's api and create new ideas from there?

StateMachine

hm, never actually considered that as a possibility actually, might check out some google APIs and see what's going

Any standalone from-scratch ideas at all?

ronkmonster

pc plus magazine are doing a php social networking site tutorial at the moment. started last month - think they keep old articles on the dvd too.

didn't buy so don't know how complex/good it is.

say that would cover quiet a bit of content

StateMachine

that sounds awesome actually, at the very least i'm sure it'd include some nice code to perv over, i'll have a look for that tomorrow cheers!!!

Jonathan

StateMachine wrote: »

Any standalone from-scratch ideas at all?

Some random ones that I've created. Might get some ideas there.

castie

Might be an idea to try using a framework such as ZEND to build a site.
I built a food recipe suggestion site with ZEND earlier this year.

StateMachine

Well i just started my own portfolio site as well so i think the first thing would be to php it up a bit, since to add to it means editing pages rather than filling out a quick form and i've loads to add to it since it's only basic at the moment (example)

so i think that'll be a good testbed minor project before i add stuff to anything major, i'm gonna pick up that pcplus magazine today and had a look through it to see if anything hits me

bushy...

These might help someone reading the thread to get going .

From the bottom of this page :

http://www.fosstools.org/


http://www.tdisecurity.com/iso/OAMP.zip

and this to make it "play"

http://www.vmware.com/download/player/


Note : These may not be any "good" for intended purpose, i don't know , i just used one for something else in a hurry

StateMachine

i think it was xampp i used earlier but now it's wampserver

TheTubes

i'd consider contributing to a mature open source project,
from what ive read the standard of code is generally quite high, peer reviewed, well tested, etc...
a couple of my favourite php ones:
gallery
mediawiki
wordpress
joomla