A Point in the Right Direction - PHP

[Ayla]

Hello! I've been a sitepoint follower for many years and an XHTML/CSS user for about 15 years. The problem is that I've been too timid to delve into PHP and now feel that I must in order to build a quality, dynamic website (obviously! =)).

My request, could someone point me in the right direction of some web tutorials? What I'd like to do is start out simple and create a constant shell surrounding my content (for example, a constant header and footer). Any advice would be well met!

Thanks for helping me break the glass wall I've been sitting underneath!

[RyanReese]

To be honest, I used this site when first starting out with PHP
http://www.tizag.com/phpT/

I should note that Sitepoint has a website they just made specifically related to PHP- phpmasters.com

You should also go to php.net, read through everything you can. I started at that tizag site. Found it immensely useful to start out .

[ralph.m]

I've been too timid to delve into PHP and now feel that I must in order to build a quality, dynamic website

Don't forget that there are many CMSes (content management systems) out there that allow you to create tremendously dynamic sites without knowing a line of PHP. (Just saying. )

[Ayla]

Thank you for the websites Ryan. I'll look through them and try to get a better feeling for things. I'm trying to start out slowly and build up

Ralph, could you tell me any those CMS sites you mentioned? Any favorites?

Thanks for the help!!

[RyanReese]

Wordpress is probably the most popular.

There is also Drupal, Joomla, and even more .

[ralph.m]

could you tell me any those CMS sites you mentioned? Any favorites?

It depends on your need, as there are big ones and little ones, but the big daddy of them all is Drupal, but my favorite is ExpressionEngine. It's not free, though, but a free alternative is MODx.

[Jason__C]

Lets not forget about ASP.NET when it comes to CMS's. You have that option also.

www.dotnetnuke.com

http://umbraco.com

Both being Free.

[Ayla]

Thanks for the list of great suggestions! If you were going to pick the official "CMS for Dummies" website, which one would you start with?

[RyanReese]

I've only ever used Wordpress before, but it seems to be among the more popular to choose from. I would personally recommend it. Unless you know very bare/minimum details about how the web works, common sense stuff, than you shouldn't have an issue navigating it and getting it to work . There are also many addons to choose from if you do a google search for whatever you need .

[cysquatch]

I've used both Wordpress and MODx and find both work very well. Wordpress is a decent introduction to PHP thanks to the documentation about the API. MODx is great if you want to build your design and layout from scratch with html and css then later inject the content management to your liking.