I'm a fairly seasoned ASP.NET developer with a decent front-end and overall programming knowledge but no PHP background whatsoever and I'm trying to get my head around Jamroom structure and eventually, start developing custom features.
Could you please recommend any good books or web resources where I could start learning PHP, find tools to set up a dev environment, etc?
I know the http://justfuckinggoogleit.com/ principle very well:) but I know that good developers read good books and use good tools and that's why I'm asking you
Joined: 27 Apr 2006
Posts: 21950
Location: Southern California
Posted: 07/08/09 12:38
neehoo -
Welcome to the Jamroom.net forums!
I would recommend checking out the w3schools.com site and checking out their php section, as well as just reading through the php docs at php.net. I'm not too familiar with any good books on PHP - I've looked at some, but haven't bought any because a lot of them are either not up-to-date or are geared towards something in particular. If you do want to go for a book, though, probably one of the o'reilly books on PHP would be a good place to start. I'd also check out zend.com, particularly their devzone, as there's a lot of articles there on php in general and introductions to php.
Regarding development environments, I personally use Eclipse PDT (Zend's version: http://www.zend.com/en/community/pdt ) for my IDE, which I really like. I use the Jamroom Dev virtual machine for a local server (using VMWare player), which you can download here: http://www.jamroom.net/Downloads_Extras . That is set up to the specs you need to run Jamroom, so it should be a perfect environment to start with.
I ordered mine off of amazon and paid only $35 I beleive it was
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For Jamroom skin and theme templates you don't really need any php, smarty can be used for most things, and for that the smarty manual is very helpful:
http://smarty.net/
That being said, SteveX is right about php in jamroom. Your only going to use PHP when you start developing modules. All of the custom work is done with smarty and the jamroom functions so for that the best thing to do is to print the manual.
Thanks guys
That's basically what I needed. I'll probably start with Smarty for templates and then get the O'Reily or WROX book (I think I'll have a walk to the local bookstore to have look at both of them).
I'm curious about this one as well http://www.amazon.com/PHP-Objects-Patterns-Practice-Second/dp/1590599098/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1247120562&sr=8-3
as I find the Apress books very good, but this will have to wait untill I get a better grip of the PHP itself.
Thanks again for all your help
