HELP: Tips on learning PHP (and MySQL)?

[TheNothingMonster]

Hello! I've been quite content with my HTML, CSS and JavaScript progress thus far and I wanted to try something different; that being PHP and MySQL.

My current ultimate goal is to figure out how to make an account management system, but I would like to check out anything cool that is possible with PHP with the addition of MySQL in general. I just don't have any examples to use as references.

I want to start off with making small/easy projects and force myself to learn by increasing the difficulty the more I delve into something over time. That is usually how I tend to study something new.

Do you have any tips or recommendations on what I could try out first? Any good tutorials I could check out? I prefer reading text to watching videos, but anything would be awesome as an introduction.

Also, I should note that all my research is often done through online resources. I cannot attend any short of special classes for the time being and I am not the best with books either.

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

A nice little starter project (after learning the absolute basics) is an website visitor counter. Build a basic, simple one, then add functionality, like filtering out IPs, generating statistics, etc.

Also, a little browser game is a great way to learn php in the long run - shouldn't be your first project, though.

[Melooon]

The first thing I'd say is don't treat MySQL as an afterthought; its its own language, with its own deep complexities. If you know how to design a good MySQL database it can completely define and change the way you design your PHP - there are people who's whole careers are just designing MySQL databases!

Second Id totally agree with Thunder, picking a project is always the best way to learn something. I was gonna suggest something a lille more complex; like making your own mini social network (That will teach you the pain of user accounts and input validation); but maybe a counter is a more practical first step 

I would recommend following a course to get the fundamentals figured out (Particularly if this is your first programming language outright) - after that I'd try studying and reworking other peoples code to learn how the build their PHP sites!

For example; this is the minecraft ping code that this forum uses; I had to rework it a lot, but it might be fun for you to try pinging some minecraft servers and logging the data in a mysql database! https://github.com/xPaw/PHP-Minecraft-Query

Id also suggest making something like a PHP 88x31 button maker; that would not be tooo complex, but it would give you a really cool thing to put on your site and it would tell you a lot about generating images in PHP!

Good luck!