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Introduction to PHP
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Recently updated threads
- {Amy's Section} Intro to PHP Weekly Meeting Tue, 2011-03-22 05:31
- Important: New Forum Fri, 2011-03-11 03:39
- Week 2 assignment Fri, 2011-02-04 17:53
- <<Fergus's Section>> Week 1 Meeting Thu, 2011-02-03 01:29
- { Saulo's SECTION } First Meeting Intro PHP course with Saulo Mon, 2011-01-31 02:32
Off we go!
Go back to: General discussion
Well, I am in; doing the Javascript course as well.
Hope I haven't bitten off more than I can chew
Good luck to all.
I have a site and a blog that haven't really gone anywhere and there is some stuff I would like to do, haven't got the technical skills.
I know some Java (Uni) and JavaFX, my web skills (HTML,CSS etc) are ancient or non-existent.
My site is hosted on 100ws and I have tried cutting and pasting things but can't seem to get anything other than basic HTML to work properly.
Anyway, that's why I am here and why I am trying to get up to speed with modern web technology.
My goals for this course are to give me a solid base of PHP so I have the tools needed to branch off on my own and learn more. As far as my programming experience, it mainly consists of introduction courses I have taken in college. So far I have taken, XHTML/CSS, JavaScript, Perl, and Java. I have also done some work with Drupal where I have had to make minor changes to modules in PHP.
On the "What Can PHP Do" page I read that PHP can be used from the command line for things such as CRON jobs, and even for Windows Scheduler. I did not know that before. I was always surprised to see that PHP could possibly be used for a desktop application.
Hi, Robert.
Yes, PHP is a general scripting language. Desktop applications are built using a GUI library, such as GTK. This is similar to the process employed by Python and other scripting languages for building desktop applications. Command-line apps are pretty straight-forward, the standard output that would normally be sent to the web document is sent to the command-line instead. PHP tends to be thought of in the same breath as the web simply because it was born to build dynamic web applications and is uniquely well-suited to it.
Hi there,
My background is XHTML, CSS and jQuery.
I'm really looking forward to this course.
I'm in the UK on GMT - so if there are others in that general area, it might be good to help each other out at times when we are awake!
See you all soon.
You're definitely not alone in that timezone, Nathan. I know JosephDuffy from my section is in GMT also.
Should we consider "trading" (no disrespect!) learners around a bit to try to organize the sections a bit better around extreme timezone differences? For instance, does it make more sense to group learners roughly by longitude so they can be facilitated in a convenient time slot and are more likely to be active at the same times of day?
Hey guys, I'm GMT timezone as well. Got my time slot options thru and they are all from 9pm onwards... If you do set up another group or even if just the GMT'ers find it easier to bounce ideas off each other that might be good?
Looking forward to starting :-)
G
Hi there,
Read the thread (email) and noticed that you are GMT too.
My name is Nathan and I'm in that boat as well.
Who knows, we might be able to copy and paste off each other in 'real-time'.
Hope to speak soon.
Except my profile was goofy - I'm Pacific Coast time. But I'd sooooo much prefer to be where you are!
I really don't know what the number of applicants is like, but I think that it would make a GREAT DEAL of sense to organise (as much as possible) people into time-zone related groups.
I would guess that most people will be contributing in daylight or evening hours and so similar time-zones might allow more 'real-time' collaboration.
My experience, albiet limited, of learning code is that when you get stuck, you get stuck and Googling is no fun. The more immediate a query's reply is, the more likely a student is to progress there and then and not have to wait until tomorrow, when the moment for quality study might well have passed...
Just my $0.02...!
I think you are right. Maybe the groups should be organized according to time-zones. I'm GMT+1 =/
This is what I'm thinking too, Nathan. However, there's currently no way for the admins to see your timezones or sort the learners on that basis. Also, I'm not certain which if any of the co-ordinators is available at a time convenient for the GMT folks.
This multi-section approach is a learning experience for the co-ordinators too. There will be flaws that we encounter, and we can at least take some solace in knowing that we'll be making the process easier for future courses.
One possible approach to solve this would be to make a master WhenIsGood table and add all students and co-ordinators to it. Then redistribute the students among sections to maximize convenience and access for all. Did that make any sense? :)
Yes, Fergus, it made sense. Perhaps a new forum thread where people can post their timezones would also be a helpful thing?
I understand where you all are coming from...my first argument is that I'm lazy and I already spent so much time putting my section together that I don't want to try to reorganize. My second, and much better argument, is that part of why I loved my course last session (anatomy of a web request) was that the input from people all over the world made things much more interesting and really opened up discussion.
My suggestion? The co-facilitators share their chat times, and open them up to members of other sections, taking roll to see who's going to be where to make sure, e.g., I'm not dumping 10 people on Fergus. (It looks like the tool we'll be using for these sessions can be passworded on a weekly basis, so you won't be able to get in without the co-facilitator's permission.) That gives participants a backup if they can't make their own chat on a given week and a complete backup if they can't ever make their own section. If we need to trade around one or two people, maybe we can do that, too. But then we keep each section a little more diverse for the rest of the discussion and reading questions etc. :) My two cents, take it for what it's worth!
oh, and also, i was thinking of trying two times for my section (i have the ability to do that, at least for the moment, being underemployed). And I was also thinking about pairing or grouping up people within the section, just for the kind of instant feedback that Nathan's concerned about. I don't think I have anyone who'd be completely alone (or forever alone...minecraft, anyone?).
Hi everyone,
I'm really looking forward to this course! I've learned HTML and CSS and want to be able to build more interesting sites. I'm also taking the design and usability course, but I've never taken a P2PU course before, so I'm very excited to see how this all works out. Looking forward to meeting you all!
Hi All,
I've been building sites with HTML/CSS and Joomla and WordPress. I can hack around within someone else's PHP to tweak a thing here or there but I really need to learn PHP to do the work I want to do.
I'm fascinated by code and I'm really hoping that I'm able to do well with this, that this will serve as my launchpad to move into programming.
Looking forward to meeting everyone and best wishes as we start our journey :)
Howdy everyone,
I'm an assistant webmaster at a small college and seminary in the Canadian prairies. I'm fairly comfortable with (X)HTML, CSS, and bits of JavaScript and classic (really old) ASP. I'm new to generated web content, and am excited to get going with PHP! And I think "School of Webcraft" is pretty much the coolest name anyone could choose for this sort of thing, so I'm happy to be on board!
I'm a web technologist at an interactive agency. I build standard complaint sites with (X)HTML, CSS, javascript while using various CMS platforms. I've done minor php edits in the past but would like to learn it by starting with the basics. My goal is to understand PHP better and to lay a foundation for building my own php driven applications as well as to avenge the murder of my sensei.
[...] as well as to avenge the murder of my sensei.
That made me smile. Thanks.
Hey there, I am in Tousif's Section and wondered if anyone knows when the timings will appear for us? Really keen to get started however am in the UK and have full time job so want to make sure I book out the right times.
Cheers
G
I guess Tousif will put up a post soon, I saw he commented on the main page...
This is me saying hello. :)
I've got two aspirations in life; writing and science. Computers (of course), regarded as a subset of science.
Over the years, I've written tech-related articles for a number of online publications, including (but not limited to) MakeUseOf.com, Envaio's Appstorm.net and recently Ars Technica. In my off time, I enjoy science-fiction literature and epic fantasy novels (TWoT, anyone?).
I'm studying for civil engineering - computer science at the K.U.Leuven, in Belgium. I'm feverish about technology and how it works, specifically computers. Although I don't think web development will be my final stop, I'd love to be able in these matters. I've got a slight background with HTML/CSS/ActionScript and have started learning Python, but I've still got a long way to go.
Hi Everyone,
I'm psyched to meet, learn from & collaborate with all of you.
I'm a freelance designer as well as an audio engineer & a dj.
I work with mainly xhtml, css, & some javascript for the web. Recently I've been doing a lot of sites in Wordpress –– I can copy & paste my way through creating a site but I'd really like to learn php so that I can write code myself and have confidence in what I'm writing.
This is my first P2P class and I'm so happy that P2P exists! Many thanks to the instructors for making this happen. I'm so excited to get started!
hi all!
i'm just getting into the world of web design and computer programming in general. i'm learning a little C, and have been in charge of redesigning the department of english homepage at the university where i work (university of texas san antonio), so my understanding of HTML and CSS has progressed a lot in the past weeks.
from what little i've gathered, PHP is syntactically based on C (as are so many other languages i suppose), so that should help me along in my understanding. my goal is to become as proficient as possible in the language. i'm really excited because i think this class will be a great way to approach PHP and get some good practices laid down as a foundation. and it's always better to learn with others!
good luck everyone!!
Patrick, it's true that PHP borrows syntax from C. It's also influenced by Perl as well. You will find PHP extremely different than C, however, and it may be a little shocking at first if you haven't explored dynamic, weakly-typed languages. For example, in PHP, one doesn't need to declare a variable before use (though it's a very good practise to assign it a default value anyway!) and variable types are weak. You can think of it as the variable type being set by each assignment in a sense rather than by declaration. This allows much more rapid application development, but also gives developers free reign to create sloppy, buggy code too (there's no compiler enforcing your type correctness).
And to anyone else who didn't follow some of that jargon, this is an intro course. I'm not going to overwhelm you or even get into cross-language comparisons in the course material. How PHP and C are similar and different is outside the course scope. I'm just chillin' on the forum right now when I should be doing work. Hmmm. I guess I should go. :)
Hi Everyone!
I'm so glad to be accepted! I'm in Tousif's Secton!!
Hi
What would be great is if there were forums constructed with real time chat and meeting capabilities and allocated to each section of this course. I don't know how this would work with all the various time zones represented here but hopefully a solution can be devised. Looking forward to this course!
There is a real-time chat. It's accessed by the "Chat" button next to the "Forums" button above the forum comments.
Hi everyone :)
My name is Jade Elizabeth and I know a little code, but only in templates. I used to build themes for people who ran SMF forums, and now I just build my own. I have my hands full with my own as it is because it re-writes all of the templates from scratch (so if you visit one of my sites and see balloons you know you're seeing a temporary theme lol). I'm running into issues because I only know how to do very basic php, such as functions and if/then/else statements. The rest I can probably read and maybe understand but I can't do it myself.
I'd really like to learn because I can use it for the things I'm passionate about. One of my websites is for writers, and I'm VERY passionate about writing and writers so learning php will help me build things to help make their lives easier (and probably cheaper lol), be it on my site or off it.
I think that's the main reason I want the skills to be honest. Yes, I do want it for my personal site, but I want it more for the people on the site rather than for me or to “make my site great” like I've wanted in the past.
This is my first p2pu class so I'm really excited :D. I have a somewhat random question though: Did anyone else go for their screen cleaning thing or is it just me who didnt realise the "lightbulbs" were part of the page? At least I have a clean screen now though lol.
Anyway I got no idea what else to say so ima shut up and let someone else say something :).
You thought the lightbulbs were dirt? LOL, that's funny. Ever since I got my MacBook Pro I've been obsessive about cleaning its screen. But Mac's do have gorgeous screens to begin with, so letting it be dirty seems sacreligious.
LOL. Well I just got my first 22 inch I think it is (hand me down after being used for a month, I got LUCKY!! :D)...and I'd been drawing on it all night so when I started seeing marks that looked like something had splashed and dripped I thought I'd splashed the milkshake I had...and then when I scrolled I realised lol.
Well I had to scroll twice, the first time I got mad thinking I'd really gone to town and splashed everywhere LOL.
It DOES look like a drip doesnt it?!
Yes, it really does. :) Looks like something hit the screen and then started to flow. You can even guess the viscosity. :) I need new monitors. :(