I had a lot of people asking me how I learned all my PHP coding skills as well as AJAX… Well, if you’re up for the task, and have patience, and the intelligence (if you are a natural with math, physics and other logic-driven subjects, you’d do just fine) to handle it, all of it can be learned online. I am a fully self-taught coder – I never took a class of any sort in my whole life (apart from the crappy computer courses taught in the public school systems). All my learning comes from the internet. The sole exception of it was Illustrator – I was in a rush to learn it in a week or so, hence I bought a book so I can read it and do it faster rather than having to search for tutorials online. It was worth the $40 I spent.
I’d likely briefly share the sources from which I learned. Remember that it always helps to look at different websites by different people in order to fully understand it. Everybody can explain things differently, and even the coding method to achieve the same results can differ from one coder to another.
- www.W3Schools.comThis website is probably the best place for basics of any language. Before you delve into the complicated PHP tutorials about how to handle database connections and spit out product directories etc., read this first, to get a more general understanding of how it works. This website gives you the most standard and compliant information for just about any web-related coding/scripting languages out there. HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP etc. Remember that they do not have the hardcore tutorials for difficult things (with the exception of the javascript section.. their javascript examples are quite abundant).
- www.tizag.comI found this website a long time ago, and I haven’t looked at it until today. But I remember taking some valuable lessons from here, and today I mastered another PHP trick while I was searching for information on Google. This website shows you a lot of great in-depth tutorials for handling PHP. I haven’t checked out the Javascript or HTML section yet, but if they are as good as the PHP section, I’d give this website a thumbs up for sure.
- www.php.netThis website will make sense only if you already have a good understanding of PHP. On this website you can search the functions, look at the parameter options and everything. You can also pick up neat information on server restriction settings and what not. Also, each function page has a comments function – just like WordPress blogs do, so that users can discuss the applicability of each function. You’ll see some smart people leaving smart comments there for sure!!!
- www.mysql.comThis site also requires some basic understanding of things before you can delve in. But to research more complicated SQL queries to optimize and speed things up, this site is probably the most reliable, resourceful, and authentic source for it.
So there it is. That’s where the coder Jeff Kee was trained out of. That’s the only 4 that’s on my mind, but there were numerous other places where I learned about DIV positioning, CSS, Javascript, XML, AJAX, etc. Look them up on Google and you’ll see tonnes of results. Also here’s another handy tip – if you want to do specific things, type that entirely into Google, and you’d be surprised at how much information you can find. For instance, “how to create new files with PHP” will give you some good results. Also, if you are looking to do something with a specific function that you already know about, toss it in. “http get header request with php pfsockopen” will return fabulous results for you. The more specific your target is, the more specific your query should be as well!
