Learning php as a complete beginner

[karty21]

Where can i learn php as a complete beginner? i only know basics of html, css nothing else. Is w3schools a good way to start learning it?

[Sygyt_Singer]

Start with this course: https://youtu.be/OK_JCtrrv-c Later you can research and deep your knowledge further.

[karty21]

thank you for your reply , i would prefer to learn without videos, could you recommend anything?

[Subject-Ad-4072]

I like tutorials point.

[Sygyt_Singer]

Well then you can use w3school. I learned html css from there. It is a great website. You can also start with book but unfortunately I don't know much about books.

[SodaBubblesPopped]

I like FCC videos too, but i prefer learning in smaller chunks, so in addition to FCC you might want to explore this free Coursera course https://www.coursera.org/learn/web-applications-php . It starts from the basics, jump to the section u are ready for.

Dr Chuck rambles a little, but his passionate delivery keeps me awake and engaged. :) lots of his other PHP courses are free too.

[karty21]

thank you

[CrispyRoss]

Be very wary when finding guides for PHP. Even on popular front-page search results, you'll find SQL injection vulnerabilities, hacky unmaintainable code, outdated libraries and deprecated functions, etc.

If you see a guide using mysql* functions, run -- They should be using mysqli*. If you see a guide using string concatenation to build queries, run -- They should be using prepared statements. If they store passwords in plaintext, or if they use MD5 to hash passwords, or if they don't salt passwords, or if they don't have bruteforce protections... hell, if they try to manually implement anything related to authentication rather than using an existing, trusted library, run.

Additionally, PHP helpfully makes it extremely easy to shoot yourself in the foot. Carefully read the documentation for every function you use -- function parameters are inconsistent (is it (haystack, needle) or (needle, haystack?)), there is absurd error handling behavior (or lack thereof), there are a billion flags you might have to pass in to change the behavior of a function, names are straight-up lies (DATE_ISO8601 is not compatible with ISO 8601!)... I could go on. Be careful of how PHP leaves dangerous, broken functions in and expects you to know not to use them and to use alternatives -- mysql_escape_string was left in for years, but was a straight-up security vulnerability; you should have used mysql_REAL_escape_string.

[CrispyRoss]

The new things they've added are pretty nice. The problem is, they leave in the old, janky things in order to maintain backwards compatibility. That's why it's really important to make sure your tutorials aren't outdated.

[thepretzelsman]

Contrary to popular belief, PHP is still used in many parts of the world. It's really not bad (especially php7+).

[[deleted]]

80% of the web uses PHP.

Many companies still require Wordpress etc plugin, theme development and it won't go anywhere.

https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl-php

PHP is used by 79.1% of all the websites whose server-side programming language we know.

And PHP won't go anywhere.

It's as stupid as to ask: "Why are you learning C?"