[neehoo]

Hi guys,

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

Thank you in advance for any advice.

[smith.kyle]

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.

Hope that helps!

Kyle

PS...here's the articles I was thinking of on zend's site: http://devzone.zend.com/node/view/id/627


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kyle[at]jamroom.net

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[jamesd116]

I like tizag.com (i think i spelled that correctly
this out of all m php books I felt was the best by leaps and bounds

http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/WroxTitle/Beginning-PHP-6-Apache-MySQL-6-Web-Development.productCd-0470391146.html

I ordered mine off of amazon and paid only $35 I beleive it was


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[SteveX]

There are a few good suggestions in the Resources and Tips for Jamroom Webmasters thread:
http://www.jamroom.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=851

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/

There is also the php manual:
http://php.net/


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Kulshi Mezian!

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[Michael]

Got to second the O'Reilly suggestion of Kyles. I LOVE O'Reilly. maybe "Learning PHP5".

As for PHP books, One that is not O'Reilly but I REALLY like is "Advanced PHP Programming" by George Schlossnagle (i've got the 2004 one, but it looks like a 2009 one is coming out too.)
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Advanced+PHP+Programming&x=0&y=0

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.

Jamroom Manual (pdf)
http://www.jamroom.net/media/File/Jamroom4.pdf


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Michael Ussher
Jamroom Network Team Member: http://www.jamroom.net
Priority Support: http://www.jamroom.net/Support_Center

[neehoo]

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

[promotedenver]

I found w3schools to be pretty practical with examples. I would use that and reference with php.net documentation.