Lynda.com - Any good?

[Redex]

Hey as some of you may know i'm a content writer, and since i've been involved with content writing for most of my time here, i haven't really paid attention to learning PHP/MySQL etc.

Well just recently i decided i want to get familiar with PHP & MySQL. I just want to learn the basics, and i'm not trying to learn with the intention that i will be able to make modifications for engines etc as that is not my goal, all i want to do is learn the basics.

Now to help me with this, i am going to be purchasing membership for Lynda.com - I am firstly going to be looking at they're videos which are PHP with MYSQL essential video training.

Please post below, if you have had any kind of experience with Lynda.com, telling me where it was a good one or not. Also please let me know, if i should go ahead and purchase this membership. Thank you.

Edited August 17, 2011 by Redex

[Redex]

I'd prefer to watch video's. Plus i'm just trying it out, so i'm purchasing a $25 membership which will last a month, just to see how it goes. I like to see someone else do it with me, as that makes it easier for me to learn ;)

[Redex]

I see, thanks for the input anyway :)

[Spudinski]

From what I've heard, it's not for novices.

That's pretty much all I know, sorry.

[Redex]

Ah i see... Thanks anyway :)

[ShadyCoco]

ermm... I got help from magictallguy, pudda, djkanna... im sure some guys here might do a live tut for some people...

[Redex]

I believe neither of them 3 people are active members on this forum anymore O.o - Although i did speak to Djkanna a few days ago, but that was about mobile phones lol.

[Spudinski]

I would be willing to do a live tut, or w/e on IRC.

[Redex]

Thanks Spudinski. Just PM me whenever your online ;)

[Dominion]

Well depending on what you mean by basic there are many ways to get going with PHP. First off the video way of learning – since you seem to want that – there is always youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/user/betterphp

Fairly new channel, but has some good stuff on there already. I would suggest you start by following the blog tutorial since it has a lot of stuff explained. There is also a “basics” playlist that goes over some stuff such as variables. I am however not sure where what you know starts, and ends at the moment. The blog covers a lot.

http://www.youtube.com/user/phpacademy

This channel has more of the basics, and goes over a fair amount of projects. I am unsure how many of his older videos are now redone, but don't watch anything older than 6 months+. Some of his videos had some real issues. They are currently being redone... I am unsure how far he is with that.

http://www.youtube.com/user/thenewboston#p/search/1/iCUV3iv9xOs

Has 200(ish) PHP videos going from the very basics, and moving up. They are from PHP academy, and go over things that should be on his channel anyway, but for some reason they are not. There are also some videos on other languages if you feel like branching out at any point. Jquery is also covered with about 200 videos for those who want to try it.

Now the more written way.

http://net.tutsplus.com/category/tutorials/php/

http://www.w3schools.com/php/default.asp

http://www.php.net/manual/en/index.php

http://www.tizag.com/phpT/

Not really sure what else to say. If you need help feel free to post. There are many more channels, but they are the ones I consider worth pointing people to. There are so many written websites I can't find the time to list them all.

On the orginal topic – never given the site a go. Sorry.

[Redex]

Ah i will be looking into the youtube channels you have given above. I already knew about phpacademy and The New Boston, but betterphp looks like a good channel as well. By the way i have purchased a one month membership on Lynda.com so i will be able to tell you guys whether it was worth it or not. Let's just say i've started off and watched 1 video, but it told me to use wamp so i can see the files and edit everything without having to buy hosting, however when i tried to do what he was doing my page was just blank. Now Lithium was very helpful, and helped me set up Xammp, so now everything is set up correctly, so i will be continuing the tutorial from tomorrow.

Oh and after a bit of information from Sniko, i figured we can download the videos from Lynda.com once you buy the membership, so are we allowed to do that or do we just have to keep watching it off the site? Anyways thanks to everyone who has taken the time out to reply ;)

[Rory_M]

You do not have to spend a penny on learning basic php, just videos and practice, plus a few people to help you out (MWG's).

[Diesl]

Lynda.com is excellent. They have very clear tutorials for a wide range of things, and their experts are usually very clear with their explanations. I've used them before at work and I would recommend them.

[Redex]

Thank you for the input Diesl :)

[Spudinski]

Actually, I would disagree with video tutorials.

Video tutorials only show you how to get to point A to point B, and that's it. Most of them doesn't even explain why, or how they achieved what they did.

A programmer should be able to look at technologies at hand, and be able to do anything with it, and vid's won't teach you that.

Online certification courses are worth less then the paper used to print them on, because they do basically the same.

For one I like the PHP manual. Although sometimes confusing to most, it does document the PHP programming language quite well. All that tutorials nowadays do, is take an example and teach how you to achieve the example. Ingenuity dies this way.

Books on the other hand actually takes the whole PHP manual and sums up the most modern and popular techniques used in dynamic web development today.

Even books dated to < 5.3 still contain a bunch of useful information.

I'm going to compare two exactly the same things surrounding PHP: "What is PHP?".

Let's take a simple tutorial for example:

php - what is it?

Taken directly from PHP's home, PHP.net, "PHP is an HTML-embedded scripting language. Much of its syntax is borrowed from C, Java and Perl with a couple of unique PHP-specific features thrown in. The goal of the language is to allow web developers to write dynamically generated pages quickly."

This is generally a good definition of PHP. However, it does contain a lot of terms you may not be used to. Another way to think of PHP is a powerful, behind the scenes scripting language that your visitors won't see!

When someone visits your PHP webpage, your web server processes the PHP code. It then sees which parts it needs to show to visitors(content and pictures) and hides the other stuff(file operations, math calculations, etc.) then translates your PHP into HTML. After the translation into HTML, it sends the webpage to your visitor's web browser.

- PHP Introduction, Tizag

And now a relatively good book:

What Is PHP?

So what is PHP anyway? It is a scripting language, mostly used on the server side, that

can be employed to generate Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) information dynamically.

PHP is connected to a web server, generally Apache or Internet Information

Server (IIS), and once it has finished generating proper HTML, it sends its creation back

to the web server for delivery to the requesting client.

I say “mostly used” on the server side because you can use PHP in many other areas,

including command line, desktop PC, and client server environments, just to name a

few. However, it is most commonly used in the web server environment.

PHP developers can also integrate PHP with one of many different database tools like

MySQL, SQLite, PostgreSQL, DB2, MS SQL, ORACLE, and so on, to make their created

content as dynamic as possible. In reality, what is produced is still a static HTML

file, but it is produced on the fly and therefore seems to be dynamic. Actually, one could

argue that since the content is dynamically drawn out of a database or some other data

source, PHP is in fact creating dynamic content.

- PHP The Good Parts, O'Reilly

They both provide you with what PHP is, but which would you like to know? How to quote a manual, or a hands on definition by someone who has been working with PHP for ~20 years.

[Nickson]

I agree with spudinski, nothing beats learning from a book in my opinion. A video tutorial forces you to take up all information at the speed it's made while when you read a book, you go as fast as you want. Also, with a video you can't be distracted for a second or you might miss an important word they say during their explanation. And since you're new to the language, you might not even know you missed something and just go on with it. Books are mostly better written with a clear structure, videos don't have it that well. Videos have their advantages of course, like actually showing something visual, but I don't find that they weigh up to the disadvantages compared to a book.