NYCPHP Meetup

[B.A.S.]

Jake, those are exactly the sort of tips I was looking for--thanks so 
much for the advice and for wishing me luck.

Bev

Jake McGraw wrote:
> Couple of suggestions:
> 
> 1. Really read the documentation available at php.net, it is the best
> resource available online. At the very least, go through the the
> Language Reference section (although you can ignore the sections
> pertaining to PHP4). Additionally, anytime you're doing something with
> a string or array, see if there is a function available for what
> you're doing. I'd say 90% of the time someone has already done the
> hard work and all you need to do is read the documentation. As a short
> cut, typing  "http://www.php.net/foobar" into the address bar will
> automatically search the PHP function list for any functions like
> "foobar".
> 
> 2. Learn a templateing system, my personal favorite is Smarty
> [smarty.php.net] and get all of your HTML out of your PHP code. This
> ties into a larger lesson for all programmers, that is learning
> Model-View-Controller pattern
> [wikpedia.org/wiki/Model-view-controller].
> 
> 3. See how the pros do it, download Drupal [drupal.org/download] or
> Vanilla [getvanilla.com] or some other Open Source PHP project and
> look at some of the conventions these developers employ. You need not
> review every line, but get an idea for how these people organize their
> code. Install the framework and see how things work.
> 
> That is how I've done things and I feel like I'm getting there. FYI, I
> started using PHP professionally about 2 years ago, but most of what I
> learned, I've accumulated in the last 6 months working as the sole
> developer for a major PHP application. You won't necessary move on
> from a noob to pro by just reading the documentation and doing the
> exercises, find something to work on (maybe write your own database
> driven blog) and throw yourself into it.
> 
> Good luck!
> - jake