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Posted by larry on 09/03/07 21:58
Besides reading you really need to get your feet wet. The best (not
always the easiest) way to do that is install a webserver/php on your
computer at home. This is not to share your stuff with the public -
but to have a "development platform" for plying with the code without
risking cracker attacks or looking bad by putting vulnerable or buggy
code on-line.
>From my experience you can only go so far from the books, you need to
get a "feel" for how it all works and that comes from trial and
error. As you get going with it, a development platform is a
necessity anyway.
Most PHP books go through the process of setting up a computer to run
PHP. Start there, and once you have the means to get instant feedback
on your practicing things will get much easier.
Others I can think of:
- Learn some formatting guidelines early - a good start is looking at
the Pear coding standards. I don't use Pear myself, but the standards
are good practice for whatever the purpose: http://pear.php.net/manual/en/standards.php
- Get a good text editor (with PHP syntax highlighting is highly
recommend) On Linux I use Kate with is a part of the Quanta IDE, but
there are many other good ones.
- When in doubt Google is your friend. Also the PHP on-line manual
which includes discussions along with the documentation - so many
valuable pointers in there! http://www.php.net/docs.php
- Read the top 7 PHP security Blunders before you put any code live -
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/php-security-blunders They aren't
hard to implement, and would be good practice to read it early.
- If you are stuck on something, post on the Usenet groups like
comp.lang.php as long as you aren't lazy and don't ask about stuff you
could have found easily via Google or the PHP manual then most people
are pretty helpful.
That should do it.
Good luck and hope you find it as fun as I do. :-)
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