Is this doable for a beginner?

PHP
1

Hello, everyone :slight_smile:

I’m about to take my first steps towards learning PHP/MySQL and I was hoping to do so while building a site that will have actual real-world value for me. This is what I want to do:

  • Build a database containing several articles
  • Each article will be assigned a category (or several), some key attributes and regular text+images
  • The output will be displayed using a print-friendly (paper/pdf) template (header - content - footer)
  • The header and footer needs to be repeated on every page if the content doesn’t fit on just one page
  • I want to be able to view/print an entire article, or
  • A list of articles, ex.: All Category A articles from the last x years, showing attribute 1, 2 and 3
  • The ability to customize lists (add/remove single articles) would be nice
  • From the front page I want to be able to add new articles
  • Every article should be editable

I’m going to use Sitepoint’s “Build your own database-driven website…” book as my teacher (plus this forum, no doubt ;)). My question is if that will teach me what I need to know for this or if it’s better to put the project on hold until my skills reach a more advanced level? The site is not intended to be released into the wild, rather it will live on a local server.

2

That sounds more than reasonable, just make sure to break everything up into small task/objectives.

3

FPDF can take care of the headers and footers on every page for you. You create your “template” by extending the FPDF class.

They have their site in a frameset, so I can’t post the exact link. Click “Tutorials” and have a look at Tutorial 2: Header, footer, page break and image.