Hello,

I've been wanting to learn to create websites for a long time. I'm not sure how hard it will be and how long it will take to learn enough to make my own database-driven website. I studied SQL, basic programming, worked with databases and am familiar with HTML tags, but this all was for work, university and I never paid a lot of attention to details.
In the past few days I read beginner's tutorials on PHP/SQL, CSS and even HTML.
Now I want to create a simple database with some tables to practice with PHP scripts for a website, write and read database information.

The idea for a site I have is for users to share their reviews of certain products, with capability of adding pictures and video to their writing.
I thought I can create a table with products' names, pictures, links to reviews, etc, as the column values and then read and write from and to this table via web interface.
The biggest fear I have right now, haven't yet completed anything, is the amount of crucial symbols in PHP and CSS. It seems hard to remember to write <?php ?> instead of something else, or put '...' for text strings and "..." for values in functions like echo.

I'd appreciate any good advices for a novice or comments on my post. Not sure if this is too informative, so questions also appreciated, of course!

Well, sounds like you have a lot of work ahead of you...

I learned PHP and MySQL from a book called PHP Fast & Easy Web Development 2nd Edition by Julie C. Meloni

Here is a list of related books: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b/104-22...amp;x=0&y=0

While I suggest learning PHP5 as soon as possible, I must stress that having a good book for nearly any version of PHP is very helpful.

This book shows how to do many of the tasks that you want to improve upon and I still refer to the book frequestly.

I also have a copy of PHP 5 Unleashed by John Coggeshall

Many of these books are available used for very little money (less than $5.00 US).


I'll add more information as I get time.

vujsa

Thanks.

My concern is that I need an SQL Server to practice PHP scripts reading and writing data to it. I know that installing SQL Server on my laptop will make it hard to work with, it's not fast enough. I applied to astahost, but seems like I won't get an account posting in the forum without any knowledge to share.

it would still probably work out quicker just to install apache, mysql, php and phpmyadmin than to go hosting it on a host. if you are using a host to try out all your php scripts then you will have to spend the time uploading them. if u just had them on your computer then all you would have to do is save the script to the htdocs folder and go to localhost/wotever.php

Thanks.
Does this package contain what you listed and what I need to start? http://www.wampserver.com/en/download.php

Should I rather install everything on its own and practice configuring MySQL and PHP to work together, or just use the package to avoid possible problems?

Also, isn't Apache for Linux or was until very recently?

Thanks!

This post has been edited by readme123456: Nov 18 2007, 05:50 AM

Ok,
I didn't wait for your answer and installed WAMP5.
Right now I can't get MySQL to respond to commands: I go to MySQL console, choose 'test' database and try to make it display any information, but it does nothing.
Here's a screenshot with no results for 'show' and 'explain' commands:

I now have much more basic questions and they appear rapidly. Where should I post with beginner's PHP coding questions like this:

Creating and loading a .php file:

for some reason displays
This is a test using the first tag type.

")?>
with the part that is supposedly simply ending echo and php script.
What have I done wrong?


Another strange thing happened, one of the sites I frequent stop displaying any content, just their header and an error message, while page source has <!-- Error: 2013:Lost connection to MySQL server during query --> line in it. They too use php, so I'm not sure if my local settings can interfere with the browser? Though astahost is working, so I'm not sure what's the problem.

Thanks.

This post has been edited by vujsa: Nov 18 2007, 03:30 PM

for the part that they display ")?>, try to code it with the ending of ; and a space. eg.





And for just the header, normally when there's error message, it will stop at the error message without displaying the whole things. So if you can put up those error message here, then maybe we can narrow down the problem. By the way, you can use xampp for your apache webserver with mysql database. Its all set and user friendly. Worth a try. Cheers

readme, instead of double and triple posting, your meant to edit your post.

you should try xampp, its got apache, mysql, php, phpmyadmin, openssl and an smtp server and a few other things in one. its from apachefriends.org, let me just find the site... http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html

im gathering youll want to choose the windows one? click the windows link and download the full one, not the lite edition.

Thanks both of you for the links. Does this imply you do not advise using WAMP5 - a similar package with MySQL, PHP5, PHPMyAdmin and Apache?
In this case can you still give me an idea of what is wrong with my ignored commands in the MySQL console (screenshot above)?

As for the php test page problems, I did actually write exactly what kelvinmaki wrote:

and still get
This is a test using the first tag type.

"; ?>

on the actual page. And removing <P>, </P> tags returns an empty page.

The website I cannot load is http://shanghaiexpat.com and it stopped loading right after I installed the package with MySQL, Apache and PHP. Try for yourself, I'm sure you can load the whole page with no problems. And like I wrote before, their main page source now has this bit in it


Thank you for bearing with me.

This post has been edited by readme123456: Nov 18 2007, 10:24 AM