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Sunday, July 29, 2007

Wanna be a web developer?

I am a web developer working with php/mysql for last few years. My friends often ask me, how to start and become professional. I give them following guideline which may take more or less 10 weeks. I hope this will help you too. Here you go:

  1. Week 1: You need a book name "Beginning PHP 5" by Wrox publication. It's a good book to start. Read chapter 2, 3, 4 to learn php & also read chapter 9, 10, 11 for mysql.
  2. Week 2: After reading these 6 chapters now practice all examples found in these chapters. Type the same code in the editor & see how it works in the browser.
  3. Week 3: Build a simple content management site where people register, login & post articles. Also create an admin panel where administrator can add/edit/delete users & their articles.
  4. Week 4: Build a photo submission & rating site like www.hotornot.com, www.ivotethis.com or www.whosthebitch.com
  5. Week 5: You need to understand an ecommerce site. Here is an open source solution name "osCommerce". Download it from www.oscommerce.com, setup & try to understand how it works. Also download the documentation & read it.
  6. Week 6: Now try to build a simple ecommerce site.
  7. Week 7: Learn Smarty template. It helps to organize your code by separating php from html. You will find help from here: http://smarty.php.net/crashcourse.php
  8. Week 8: To become professional you need to have basic idea about the followings:
  9. Week 9 & 10 (Optional): Now try to understand a script name "Joomla" - www.joomla.org . It's a Content Management Script (CMS). With this open source script you can build any website in the world :) & can deliver to your client fast. It's a great script I have ever found.
Let me know what you think. Have fun :)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Excellent suggestion in step 1! Glad you like our Wrox books

Anonymous said...

Really Sorry, I post your article in my blog(http://genzoeri.blogs.friendster.com/genzs_blog/2008/01/wanna_be_a_web_.html), but not give the original link. I will add it immidiately.
Thanks for your nice article :)
Regards,
Eri