Learning a new programming language can be intimidating, but with the right resources, it can be an enjoyable and rewarding experience. PHP is a great language to learn for creating dynamic websites and web applications, and there are plenty of resources available to help beginners get started. From online tutorials to books and courses, this article will provide readers with the best resources to learn PHP and become proficient programmers.
Table of Contents
Tutorials and Online Courses
What follows is a brief overview of the top five most popular websites to learn PHP.
- php5-tutorial.com – Their tutorial is designed for beginners that have some understanding of HTML and CSS. It covers all the basics and you can skip a section that you are familiar with. Furthermore, it has a section that covers PHP and MySql. That way you can also learn how databases work as part of a PHP script.
- Youtube PHP Front To Back – This is a free youtube course brought to us by Traversy Media. The videos range from 18 to 23 minutes in length. The content covers all the basic principles of PHP, working with databases, Apache, and so on. Plus, there are mini-project tutorials on how to create a login system, contact form, and so on.
- nusphere.com – This is one of the most thorough free courses that cover everything from installing and configuring PHP and Apache to some of the most important PHP security issues and their solutions. It is a simple learning platform made for those eager to learn at their own pace and without any distractions.
- PHP The Right Way – At first, this looks like a generic online tutorial website for learning PHP. To some extent, it is exactly that, as it contains the basic resources for learning PHP. But once you dive into it, you will find that it’s regularly updated, it is easy to read, supports only the best coding practices, and links to other exceptionally practical online tutorials.
- Udemy – PHP for Beginners – More than 70,000 students have used this particular course to learn to program in PHP. What makes it so popular is that not only you will learn the basics of PHP, but also how to work on CMS projects. To that end, the course comes with a set of practical projects and exercises.
- W3Schools – W3Schools is a popular web development tutorial site that offers a free PHP tutorial for beginners. It covers basic PHP syntax, control structures, functions, and arrays.
Best PHP Code Editors
Popular PHP Frameworks
- Laravel – Laravel is a web application framework with expressive, elegant syntax.
- CodeIgniter – CodeIgniter is a powerful PHP framework with a very small footprint, built for developers who need a simple and elegant toolkit to create full-featured web applications.
- Symfony – Symfony is an extensive PHP MVC framework with 50 stand-alone components available for your own applications.
- CakePHP – CakePHP is simple and easy to install, as you only need a web server and a copy of the framework. CakePHP 4 is a web development framework running on PHP 7.4 (min. PHP 7.2).
- Yii – Yii is a fast, secure, and efficient PHP framework. It’s a high-performance, component-based framework for developing modern web applications.
Popular PHP CMS
- WordPress – The most famous blogging platform which you can use to easily create a beautiful website, blog, or app.
- Magento – Magento empowers thousands of retailers and brands with the best eCommerce platforms.
- Drupal – Drupal is an open-source platform for building multi-purpose websites.
- Joomla – Joomla! is the mobile-ready and user-friendly way to build your website.
- OpenCart – An open-source PHP-based online e-commerce solution.
- ExpressionEngine – A fast, flexible, feature-rich PHP CMS for building amazing websites.
- PyroCMS – Built on the world’s most popular PHP framework, Laravel.
Tools
Online Tools
- WriteCodeOnline – Write and test run PHP code online from your browser anywhere, anytime.
- PHP Array Example – Random PHP array data.
Online Database Manager
- phpMyAdmin – phpMyAdmin is a free software tool written in PHP, intended to handle the administration of MySQL over the Web. phpMyAdmin supports a wide range of operations on MySQL and MariaDB. Frequently used operations (managing databases, tables, columns, relations, indexes, users, permissions, etc) can be performed via the user interface, while you still have the ability to directly execute any SQL statement.
- Adminer – Adminer (formerly phpMinAdmin) is a full-featured database management tool written in PHP. Conversely to phpMyAdmin, it consists of a single file ready to deploy to the target server. Adminer is available for MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, SQLite, MS SQL, Oracle, Firebird, SimpleDB, Elasticsearch, and MongoDB.
Web-based File Manager
- PHP File Manager – A good solution for managing files and folders for developers who can’t access their site over SSH or FTP.
- Tiny File Manager – TinyFileManager is a web-based file manager and it is a simple, fast, and small file manager with a single file, a multi-language ready web application for storing, uploading, editing, and managing files and folders online via web browser.
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