Advice on a PHP Site

[Norman]

Hi guys and gals. I want to learn PHP. I will try to develope a php site in local, so I will try to create a 'signing system', a 'profile system' and other things. I want advice on how should I start this personal improvement process. Should I start with a index.php page where I put a menu (just for be sporting, lol) a welcome message and a login/register system? Or what? I need advice.

[justsomeguy]

There's no one right answer, the only answer is to start at the beginning. If it makes sense to you then do it.

[Norman]

Should I start by using login/register prepared codes (or tuts) or should I learn how to develope them from the beginning? What do you think?

[boen_robot]

Should I start by using login/register prepared codes (or tuts) or should I learn how to develope them from the beginning? What do you think?

I think you should start by first building pseudo applications to just try out all of things involved. I mean just for a test drive, you know. Only then attempt to make something as useful as a login system.First learn the basic syntax of PHP, you know... $_GET vs $_POST, single vs double quotes, loops, arrays, comparrison operators, etc.Then, taking basic DB examples, try to see different SQL queries affect the databse until you're comfortable with MySQL. This includes trying to "echo" some results, inserting something, deleting something, and editing something. All with some pseudo code that will show you the effects.Always look at the generated source code of the page. That is, once you open the PHP in the browser, from the server, click "View Source" to see the resulting text.Only once you have a good understanding of PHP and DBs (well... MySQL really), you can start writing something useful as a login system, and from scratch too, without even reading tutorials, let alone applying them.

[justsomeguy]

Yeah I would try to stay away from tutorials. The only instruction that a lot of tutorials give is "copy this, paste it here". Sometimes they explain the "how" and very seldom do they explain the "why", both of which you need to know. Programming isn't about copying and pasting, it's about understanding what you're doing and why you're doing it that way.When I initially wanted to learn PHP I just designed a small application that used everything I wanted to learn, like sessions, databases, file I/O, etc. In my case I built a small photo gallery. I say "initially" because I'm still learning, a lot of what I use at work isn't new to me anymore. So when I want to learn something new I do the same thing, design an application that uses what I want to learn. I just built a small website where all it does it track golf scores and calculate statistics, but it uses AJAX and draggable/resizable panels on the page and things that I wanted to see how to do.As far as where to start in an application, registering and logging in is usually a logical place to start.