PHP Basics

Yup, it’s day one of the exciting PHP adventure! This screencast is five and a half minutes long, and it covers some basic information like what you need to get started, how to make a PHP file with Notepad, and the very basics of PHP syntax. See the links below the video for more details.

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This five-minute video covers the basics of strings, variables, and how to combine strings and variables.

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Links for PHP Day 2: Strings and Variables
Strings:

PHP: Strings - The page on strings from the PHP manual.
String (Computer Science) - General information (and scary math stuff) from Wikipedia.
Weekly Word: Concatenate - A post on my writing blog […]

Today I got familiar with the way PHP uses numbers and operators — just a basic introduction, only three minutes long.

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Links for PHP Day 3: Numbers and Operators
Integers and Floats in PHP:

PHP: Integers - The PHP manual’s page on integers.
PHP: Floating Point Numbers - The PHP manual’s page on floats.
Floating Point - Wikipedia […]

This seven-minute video covers the basics of making functions, using functions, returning values, and reading function prototypes.

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Links for PHP Day 4: Functions
Making functions:

PHP Functions - An overview of creating your own functions, much more simple (in other words, less frightening) than the PHP manual.
PHP: Functions - More advanced explanations and details from the […]

This five-minute video covers the basics of arrays and multi-dimensional arrays — with a quick look at a couple built-in array functions. This video moves pretty fast, so don’t worry if you miss something! It’s meant to be more of an introduction to be watched before you look at the links (below the video) and […]

This five-minute video covers the basics of boolean values, comparison operators, logical operators, and conditional statements (using if, else, elseif, and switch).

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Links for PHP Day 6: Booleans, More Operators, and Conditional Statements
Booleans:

PHP: Booleans
Note: it’s been brought to my attention (thanks to a certain database-programming boyfriend) that I really skipped over explaining boolean values. […]

This video (five and a half minutes long) covers the basics of loops, as well as a couple more operators.

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Links for PHP Day 7: Loops
Operators:

PHP: Incrementing/Decrementing Operators - A reference page with examples from the PHP manual.
PHP: Assignment Operators - Reference page from the PHP manual explaining the use of = and the […]

This is just a three-minute introduction/overview of including PHP files in other PHP files.

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Links for PHP Day 8: Including Files
Here are reference pages from the PHP manual on the different ways to include files:

PHP: Include
PHP: Require
PHP: Require_once
PHP: Include_once

I’d love to see a well-written article explaining the stuff on the page for include. Hardly […]

Last night I made my first functional HTML form using PHP! It’s very basic, but it works! This five-minute video shows what I learned — not much, but enough to get started.

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Links for PHP Day 9: Using PHP with HTML Forms
PHP superglobals:

PHP: Predefined Variables - PHP Superglobals - A list of the […]

This six-minute video explores the security issues and differences between the superglobals $_GET, $_POST, and $_REQUEST, as well as the problematic register_globals option.

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Links for PHP Day 10: Security Issues with Superglobals and register_globals
Security issues and differences between superglobals $_GET, $_POST, and $_REQUEST:

PHP Get - Overview of the $_GET superglobal array.
PHP Post - Overview […]