For making career in web development, pursuing a PHP course becomes very important. The reason is simple; it comes among the widely-used web development programming languages across the globe. More than 75 percent of the world’s websites use PHP in some way and that’s a lot of rep.
So obviously learning PHP can help you make your career as web developer. It also let you create power websites as well as CMS like WordPress and Drupal. So, you can either choose to become a PHP developer or CMS developer whichever you like.
While pursuing PHP course there are a couple of things that one should keep in mind that will help you in future so here are 6 tips for anyone who is learning PHP.
How to Pursue PHP Course in a right way?
Tip 1. Do not take Core PHP lightly
While pursuing PHP course, many times I see that students are not paying that much attention to the core part of the programming language if they know other languages. But it’s important to pay attention to the core of this language. See, not everything you learn in another language will be applied here there are always going to be exceptions.
Now I don’t mean the concept will change. Actually, I am talking about the syntaxes. Syntaxes are always going to be different and if you are not paying enough attention to the core part then you’ll get stuck in most things while working in PHP.
Tip 2. Build something
After completing the core PHP you’ll learn how to use it as backend language along with a database.
Now some of you might just practice what’s taught you in PHP classes by the instructors and be done. But it’s not the way as soon as you learn the basics of the let’s say advance PHP, try to make something using the same concepts. Preferably choose a website and try to make its admin panel and link everything from the database to front-end site.
See, I am asking to do this because with practice you learn many things.
If you try to make a site in the beginning you’ll encounter a lot of errors and you’ll learn a lot like validations, login/logout system, displaying content dynamically, and much more.
Say you learnt about session variables in class, yes you can make a simple login logout for practice but it is not enough. Try the same thing while embedding into a website; you will find it a bit more challenging than simple practice.
Trust me, if you follow this then by the end of your PHP course you’ll have a fully dynamic site built by you.
Tip 3. Keep everything
Don’t delete any incomplete project or file just keep it with you. Why is this important? Because it can happen that you did something earlier and when again you try to do it you encounter error. Though you can Google to know how to resolve that error but at times you don’t need to do that.
To resolve the errors, sometimes you just need simple code you used while making the crud just to remember some of the parts.
So, keep old files with you. It may happen your code is easier to understand what you find online.
Same thing goes for the files given by your teacher in the web development classes. Keep them separately and while practicing try to write full code by your own. Don’t copy and paste the code from class files at least not in the early stages of your learning. There are chances that you won’t remember the copied code.
When in class just note down the steps of what your teacher explained and try to replicate the same.
These habits are going to help you even after the completion of your PHP course.
Tip 4. Learn MVC (Model-View-Controller)
Many beginners make this mistake, they think you only need to learn PHP or advance PHP. But the thing when you look for a job no one wants a vanilla PHP developer. You need to learn at least one framework doesn’t matter if you plan for working in CMS (content management system).
What these MVC do is bring efficiency and speed to the project along with object orient usage. Now, a lot of times these PHP frameworks are used to create applications. So, I will recommend creating one yourself when learning and following all the OOPs concepts in it.
Tip 5. Follow documentation
There are a lot of resources out there which you can follow during your PHP training. Yeah most of them are good but don’t avoid PHP.net. It is literally the encyclopedia of the PHP. You can even find the solutions of the error in the comments of the respective sections. It provides an in depth explanation to all the concepts so don’t miss that.
For simplicity what you can do is read a brief about the topic from W3School. You can also use it to track your progress. Then go to PHP.net for in depth explanation. Also while practicing you can use tutorialspoint which is a good site to follow.
I would say you don’t need books for learning programming language. Because you can learn a lot more from these online resources than you’ll learn from the books. Even if you are reading a book just check the version and year of it because you know updates are very common.
Tip 6. Don’t ignore CMS
Like I said vanilla PHP is not in demand you should have something more in your sleeves like a framework or a CMS and why not both.
There are a lot of CMS but the one you should consider learning first is WordPress. It is the most popular and used CMS in the world and only in this we have three different job profiles like you can be WordPress manager, developer, or the SEO person.
Learning WordPress is quite easy. It doesn’t even require a developer for management. Anyone can manage the site in WordPress. Though it works on a combination of theme and plugins and that’s where the role of a developer comes in.
In a WordPress site the front-end part is called a theme and content displayed is managed by WordPress. But the theme and plugin has to be developed or if need arise customized.
So in WordPress basically you have to learn 3 things:
- Basic Management
- Theme Development
- Plugin Development
Take your PHP development skills to the next level with world’s most popular CMS i.e. WordPress. Join our advanced WordPress course which covers training in basic management, theme development and plugin development.
PHP course learning process
I will recommend joining the institute for learning basically any language instead of just self-learning by reading documentations and YouTube videos. Because these are somewhat incomplete and you cannot interact with them like you can with a human being hence join a PHP training institute.
While we are on the topic of joining an institution; let me tell you about the PHP courses offered by our web development training institute.
- PHP Master Course
- PHP & MySQL Premium Course
- WordPress Standard Course – Basic theme management WordPress course.
You can also check the list of our top web development courses where both certificate and diploma programs are coming.
These PHP courses are available for both online and classroom sessions. You can also choose the course mode like weekdays, regular, alternate whatever you see fit. The classes only consist of only 5-6 students so the teacher can track the progress of every student. After the completion of the course we also help you in getting a job through our own job portal where jobs are posted related to every field.
Try to follow these tips and practice daily.
