Important PHP Resources

[Nintendus]

I feel there should be one of these, as I could not find one. Forgive me if I am wrong, but two directories could not hurt.

I feel PHP as a language is neccessary to know on the internet nowadays as sites are moving away from static pages.

PHP software editors:
http://www.mpsoftware.dk/ (PHP Designer 2006) - This one gets a personal thums up from me, the personal version is free and it has a lot of desirabale features.

Macromedia Dreamweaver - This one costs a lot as some of you know. I do not feel it is entirely worth is myself, as it is more of a HTML editor for people to lazy to really learn it.

Notepad++ (http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/about.php) - Quite a basic bit of software based on MS's wordpad. Features syntax highlighting and some other features. Worth checking out.

http://www.nusphere.com/products/index.htm - I have very little experience with this but I have heard it is quite popular.

Book tutorials:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dynamic-Sites-Visual-QuickPro-Guides/dp/0321336577/sr=8-1/qid=1162592381/ref=sr_1_1/203-1844096-6197565?ie=UTF8&s=books
This is the guide I used, covering PHP and mySQL. I thought it was brilliant personally, it took me through at a comfortable pace and had examples as well.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/PHP-MySQL-Web-Development-3rd/dp/0672326728/ref=pd_sim_b_5/203-1844096-6197565 - Another book, this one I have not read. But it appears to have good reviews cited.

Online tutroials:
http://w3schools.com/php/default.asp - perhaps some of the best tutorials online, but I personally find them boring and hard to follow.

http://www.phpfreaks.com/ - A lot on offer here, including bunches of tutorials and code examples.

http://www.zend.com/php/beginners/index.php - Another good beggininers guide to starting out in PHP.

[conor]

Hmmm. I never really thought there were any good IDEs for php. That was the one thing it lacked. The sites you mentioned were very helpful when I started coding php.
The official docs on
www.php.net (http://www.php.net)
are worth a look after that. They're really helpful

[fraggled]

Decent IDEs :\ You must have overlooked such IDEs as Dreamweaver and Zend, plus, I have to be honest, if you can't code by hand you shouldn't be coding or claiming to be a programmer. I'm not saying this is you but in general.

I use Dreamweaver personally because it will integrate with client projects by allowing me to store snippets and change the IDE to have inline things I program in. Zend is good if you don't know how to run your own server because it has inline debugging and servers, its not built for the average n00b though. Talking about this brings up the days of getting Zend certifications :(

http://www.sitepoint.com - Very good resource. (http://www.sitepoint.com)
http://www.php.net/enter_function_name_here/ - Specifics on functions fast.


For those of you who have never built or don't understand templating systems http://smarty.php.net/ would be good for you.

[conor]

I actually don't use and IDE. I test my scripts with abyss web server and notepad. Most ppl looking for php resources will be beginners and therefore might benefit from an IDE for a bit of help.
I had issues with zend running vista but I'm sure it's ok for any other OS
Bad Vista :angered:

[fraggled]

As long as everyone around here hand codes and uses their own snippets (not other peoples unless its them learning from a tutorial) I am rather happy :), nothing makes me happier then when other people hand code like me from the brain. IDE or no IDE we all have our prefrences there and thats not what makes the programmer, its whether or not you program it by hand :p.