1) Is PHP 5 much different from PHP 4?
2) To someone who doesn't want to do much about about web developing (I'm just building an e-learning/e-commerce website and I can't have anyone else to do that for me), would it be better to learn ASP, or learning PHP + SQL is indeed the best option?
3) How did you learn? I'm thinking of buying books as Nou recommended, but I wonder whether taking one of those web developing courses is worth it (even though I'd have to learn HTML all over again for no reason). I've tried some on-line tutorials as well but I got completely lost

___________________
Indiana Clones Upcoming Sets
[ I May Upload Something Someday ]

get the php book and find teh pertinent chapters and learn them. I downloaded a few ebooks and went through the php bible and I have agood understanding of what php can do. so you can try that out.


and to me, php + mysql > everyone else.

quote:

Originally posted by josh4 as true with most things, experience and practice. how you do that is up to you

Quite what I thought Thanks to both of you

But back to the first question... how different is PHP 5 from PHP4?

___________________
Indiana Clones Upcoming Sets
[ I May Upload Something Someday ]

e-learning can be distributed by many means. What method you pick should be determined by what the client wants, the web server that is availble to you, the features you need, expandability, scalability, and what is easiest to deploy quickly.

As for 4 vs 5 i don't think there are a lot of diffences, but don't be lazy go to php site and look it up. If you have difficulty doing that then good luck with learning a language on your own. No offense but you sound pretty clueless to be taking on a project as you discribe with no knowledge.

Last edited by igottaknow on Apr-09-2005 at 17:19

quote:

Originally posted by igottaknow e-learning can be distributed by many means. What method you pick should be determined by what the client wants, the web server that is availble to you, the features you need, expandability, scalability, and what is easiest to deploy quickly. As for 4 vs 5 i don't think there are a lot of diffences, but don't be lazy go to php site and look it up. If you have difficulty doing that then good luck with learning a language on your own. No offense but you sound pretty clueless to be taking on a project as you decribed with no knowledge.

The thing is: I'm the client. I'm not doing this because I need but simply because I want, despite of all the trouble I'm going to have.

I'm looking forward to making a rather descent site teaching Japanese languages (oh, the irony ) to Portuguese speaking learners. I'd humbly say I'm good at design and basic features - HTML, CSS, Flash and XML - and I'm slowly taking more time to work on my web developing endeavours... but I'm aware that it takes time. No hurry.

The reason why I want PHP (and SQL), specifically, is because I'm having some problems with organisation, and having a database would be quite handy. I could write loads of different HTML pages, but I reckon this cause a lot of problems in the long run. All I want is to make a database and have PHP retrieve the stored content of the webpages I'm writing so I can use the same content in two different pages without the need of editing both pages whenever I want to change something.

I'm off to php.net - wish me luck

___________________
Indiana Clones Upcoming Sets
[ I May Upload Something Someday ]

Google is your friend.

___________________

FRVADE THE HARDEST INTERNET ENIGMA
JIMS!

quote:

Originally posted by mellow_head Google is your friend.

it is, although I find yagoohoogle a better friend

___________________
Indiana Clones Upcoming Sets
[ I May Upload Something Someday ]

quote:

Originally posted by Lira The thing is: I'm the client. I'm not doing this because I need but simply because I want, despite of all the trouble I'm going to have. I'm looking forward to making a rather descent site teaching Japanese languages (oh, the irony ) to Portuguese speaking learners. I'd humbly say I'm good at design and basic features - HTML, CSS, Flash and XML - and I'm slowly taking more time to work on my web developing endeavours... but I'm aware that it takes time. No hurry. The reason why I want PHP (and SQL), specifically, is because I'm having some problems with organisation, and having a database would be quite handy. I could write loads of different HTML pages, but I reckon this cause a lot of problems in the long run. All I want is to make a database and have PHP retrieve the stored content of the webpages I'm writing so I can use the same content in two different pages without the need of editing both pages whenever I want to change something. I'm off to php.net - wish me luck

php and mysql is the perfect match. download the latest (non beta version) and learn it. of course you could go the multimedia route and use shockwave and pull your data from xml. since this is learning a language then streaming audio will be really important. I'd also investigate what current language sites do.

quote:

Originally posted by igottaknow php and mysql is the perfect match. download the latest (non beta version) and learn it.

I will... cheers, igottaknow

Erm... can I call you gotty?

edit: Streaming audio is alright by now - I'm going to have some mp3's (and Real Audio files) in the website... probably I'm gonna use flash as well, although I can't use it much because we've got too many 56k'ers in Brazil so the lighter, the better. And I'm checking some other e-learning sites I like. Once again, thanks

___________________
Indiana Clones Upcoming Sets
[ I May Upload Something Someday ]

quote:

Originally posted by Lira I will... cheers, igottaknow Erm... can I call you gotty? edit: Streaming audio is alright by now - I'm going to have some mp3's (and Real Audio files) in the website... probably I'm gonna use flash as well, although I can't use it much because we've got too many 56k'ers in Brazil so the lighter, the better. And I'm checking some other e-learning sites I like. Once again, thanks

-mp3 don't stream but they're small
-real audio is expensive and you need a ra server and pay per download
-shockwave is the best inexpensive streaming solution

quote:

Originally posted by igottaknow -mp3 don't stream but they're small -real audio is expensive and you need a ra server and pay per download -shockwave is the best inexpensive streaming solution

Huh? I've managed to stream real audio before without much hassle:

1) I wrote a TXT file with the URL of a Real Audio file.
2) I renamed the TXT to RAM
3) Uploaded the RAM as well and linked to it from a webpage.

I had this in my geocities website for years. Here, I can give you an example of how it works, hold on.

By the way, I thought the same could be done with mp3's by using playlists but in case I can't, yeah, I'm going to use shockwave

edit: here, I'm not sure whether this can be called "streaming" but this works for what i need - clicky.

___________________
Indiana Clones Upcoming Sets
[ I May Upload Something Someday ]

Last edited by Lira on Apr-09-2005 at 17:55

Hello there, I started to Learn Databases a few months ago and I can now write full database scripts, dynamic content the works, it really is simple to learn. Here are some pointers I pesume you are going to learn PHP rather than ASP, PHP4 is more secure and has less bugs in than PHP5 but PHP5 is easier to configure when using apache config.

Best way to get started is to follow the guide here.

http://php-mysql-tutorial.com

It will take you through the steps of getting started installing APACHE webserver which is more stable than IIS in my own opinion, it will guide you through installing MySQL client , aswell as adding all the extra lines in the CONF apache files, before going ahead with the database straight away , i would create some php examples , learn the variables and IF , ECHO statments, then i would install PHPMYADMIN which is the web client for Creating your own SQL databases, SQL is huge and can be complex to learn, dont give up.

I strongly recommend you that you Dreamweaver MX Dynamic content builder, create a PHP page then create a connection script to your SQL database either on localhost or I.P Address to remote server. Then Dreamweaver will let you create a record set, for each table. The functions are awesome and you dont need to write a single line of CODE,

add me on msn if you need some help [email protected]

Enjoy.

___________________

" You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip
through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us will-
ing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert."