Topic: getting started with PHP

[madridwx]

Now that I have Weather Link and VWS running together nicely with VirtualVP I've been thinking about diving into the world of PHP.  I've seen lots of information on PHP in this forum, but I was wondering if anyone could point me to a place where I can get information on how to start learning PHP.  Either books or web sites.  I have a decent grasp of HTML and with my IT experiance I don't think it will be very hard to learn.  Any help is appreciated.  thanks

[saratogaWX]

The way I'd learned PHP was by starting with carterlake's collection of scripts, and anole's wxsticker script, seeing how they worked and learning from there.  The best reference for PHP is from http://www.php.net/download-docs.php . I use the Windows Extended HTML help version very often! It is packed with user notes and code snippets showing how to use various features, and allows me to stick to a PHP 4.x version feature set for my code.

The best PHP book I'd found was from O'Riley:

PHP Cookbook
O'Riley - 2003 - ISBN: 1565926811
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1565926811/sr=1-1/qid=1155322336/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-0169089-0724777?ie=UTF8&s=books

I have other favorite tools/references for web developers on my site at http://saratoga-weather.org/scripts.php#reference

Also, there's a Website Designers website at http://www.sitepoint.com/ that I signed up to receive news/mailings. Sitepoint also has downloadable free sample chapters from the books they publish -- worth a look.

You're also free to download my scripts and reuse parts of them in your own constructions. http://saratoga-weather.org/scripts.php  

Have fun!

Best regards,
Ken

[SLOweather]

After Anole's weather sticker and banners script, I started with the php templates from http://www.ibdhost.com/help/templates/

Also O'Reilly's Learning PHP5, and PHP Pocket Reference.

[kray1000]

A reference I use occasionally...
http://www.tizag.com/phpT/index.php