While my teaching, writing and development mostly focusses on front-end web technologies – HTML, CSS, and JavaScript – this site also contains content on back-end tech, including PHP and MySQL. This reading list therefore constitutes an introduction to the fundamentals of PHP; further research will be required for more advanced topics.
One of the reasons behind the continued popularity of PHP is its strong support for handling data of all kinds, including forms, eMails, and file uploads. The belief that HTML5 & JavaScript have somehow magically replaced any need for server-side technologies in these areas is a common misunderstanding: broadly speaking, JavaScript and HTML5 accessorize and enhance these processes, rather than replacing them.
Even if you only pepper your site with snippets of PHP for its sheer utility, you still need to know the basics, which includes variables, arrays, the date() function, and includes.
Goals: Create an include() that adds the current date to a web page using concatenation; make and use a simple variable, array, and a basic function.
Total time for practice: 4 hours
Prerequisites: Introduction to PHP
