Making a mistake learning PHP before HTML? And what about JS?

Hi all,

I've started learning PHP recently - about four days ago. And it's fun but I'm frustrated (I always am when learning a new skill), and I had a question before I kept going.

I do want to design websites. I can put together relatively professional looking WordPress sites without knowing a real lick of HTML code, seriously - you all know how easy that program is.

But beyond just building websites, several of my sites received enough interest to make me really look into building some tools and features into these websites, and when looking at tools/features that were similar to what I was wanting to create, they were primarily either PHP or Javascript based.

So I chose PHP a few days ago, read a few tutorials (nothing hugely in depth yet), but I was wondering if I should go through a basic HTML course first, at least. I'm also considering reading a little about JS as a lot of things I'm "liking" and wanting to build or implement on my own sites, seem to consist a lot of .js files. Which I'm assuming is Javascript, which I'm assuming is different than jQuery but the same as Java.

LOL. Anyway, I'll go further into PHP or JS the next several weeks, it's important for a personal project of mine, just was thinking about whether I should invest time in learning HTML - I CAN make pretty websites, but only by buying them off Themeforest, LOL.

Thanks all!

You can pick up basic html in a few days, as there really isn't much to it. While learning php, read a few html tutorials on the side just to make sure that you have that end covered. In order to build any website you're going to need at least basic html skills.

Thank you! I'm going to try and hunt down some good tutorials now. I just got a great PHP ebook from Tizag, going to have to check piratebay for the more frequented HTML tuts.

Thanks again!

I think you must know html before going to php. php is server side scripting language which will handle client side calls. So if you do not know what is happening when actually you are echoing or we can say how will you even decide what to "echo" as it will generate html and send it to client. So I think knowledge of html is must before php.

Second javascript has nothing to do with Java and jquery is a cross browser javascript library.

Make website is html and css, sprinkle some javascript and handle server side calls through php.

you can compare it like:

starting to learn trading gold, without knowing anything about Forex trading.

they are not directly linked, but both are important relative to each other

seriousjoker said:

I think you must know html before going to php. php is server side scripting language which will handle client side calls. So if you do not know what is happening when actually you are echoing or we can say how will you even decide what to "echo" as it will generate html and send it to client. So I think knowledge of html is must before php.

Click to expand...

This was exactly my thinking, leading me here to ask before I continued further with PHP.

Think about php as a brain and html is the clothes. php decide what to display on your page and html decide how will it be displayed .
Exactly I think what you need is: css not html. css is the style and colors of your clothes.

You got your answer, so, here are some good resources to learn html and css :

http://www.youtube.com/course?list=ECC1322B5A0180C946

And, search TPB for "30 days to learn HTML and CSS" (Brilliant course IMO)

With either PHP or JS, all you do is take what you think you want to accomplish, google it to find examples of source code. Then, to the best of your ability, alter it to suit your purpose. That's the best way to learn either PHP or JS.

Learning HTML is mostly going to boil down to knowing what a <div> tag is and how to position them into your template so that the things you programmed in PHP/JS are positioned correctly.

The only thing that is important is that the final product works, not how much you had to learn before you were able to do it. Learning will come in time.

phpbuilt said:

With either PHP or JS, all you do is take what you think you want to accomplish, google it to find examples of source code. Then, to the best of your ability, alter it to suit your purpose. That's the best way to learn either PHP or JS.

Learning HTML is mostly going to boil down to knowing what a <div> tag is and how to position them into your template so that the things you programmed in PHP/JS are positioned correctly.

The only thing that is important is that the final product works, not how much you had to learn before you were able to do it. Learning will come in time.

Click to expand...

I'm glad to see that. I'm actually using a couple CodeCanyon scripts, slowly altering them to fit what I need, and they're getting close. The functionality of them was already very close to what I wanted, so now a lot of it is very minor changes, or additions to what is already there. This has helped a ton in my learning, having an actual project to work on.

Also, it does lead me to believe that while I'm going to love reading these tutorials and gaining a more in-depth grasp of these languages over time, it's as you say - what I NEED to learn to make my project WORK...is actually very little.

iwillnbd said:

You got your answer, so, here are some good resources to learn html and css :

http://www.youtube.com/course?list=ECC1322B5A0180C946

And, search TPB for "30 days to learn HTML and CSS" (Brilliant course IMO)

Click to expand...

Downloading it now! Thanks for the link and course suggestion!

I was on the same boat as you, if you want good sources to learn how to code in PHP, I recommend you Larry Ullman's books, well structured content. I've read a ton of ebooks, but his books gave me a good starting point. Don't waste your time following tutorials from the web, most of then are old and lack of good programming practices...like security.
About HTML5 and CSS3, you guess right, you better get the basics...Peachit press Visual QuickPro Guide books are great as well as Oreally Missing Manual books, especially the CSS3 book..highly recommended .
And before jumping into any javascript library...I recommend you to learn at least the foundations of javascript, you will understand any other library faster, I know many people say you don't actually need to know JavaScript to learn jQuery, but I discover that's not true, if you want to do more than basic things and use jQuery plugins, having JavaScript background will be of great help.
Finally, if you are using windows...I recommend you to use WAMPSERVER, it's solid and faster...you'll have everything to start coding PHP on you Windows computer.

Thanks so much for the indepth reply! I have downloaded XAMPP but haven't played with it yet - a YouTube tutorial I just watched utilized WAMP though, and it did look very user-friendly.

I will look for Larry Ullman's books - I've acquired most of what PirateBay has to offer, haha.

Again, thank you!

WAMP is the best , AMPPS is close...with WAMP if you are planning to use virtual hosts, it will require some setup, but there are lots of tuts on the web. Another great source is wowebook.be

Try to learn the basic of HTML first then you start with PHP.

You can learn HTML in a weekend.

I would do that before you start with php because you need html to really see why PHP is so powerful. It's useless having PHP without HTML.

I learnt PHP before I went to college and hence before I learnt C ....now looking back it was a good decision I took ,tough i don't code in PHp anymore but whatever little coding which I did was never hindered by the fact that I never learnt HTML ....I only knew creating basic forms tables little bit CSS etc I just kept a complete reference HTML with me or just googled for a solution . i am still coding for web applications ( python and Jsp now ) and trust me I still don't know much html .

learn it well and you can learn HTML and css easily bro