Learning PHP and Laravel

I was and mostly still am in the same position as you. Ok with front end, not so with the back end.

For me the best place to start is not really with Laravel, it's with PHP itself. Absolutely start with:

https://laracasts.com/series/object-oriented-bootcamp-in-php

And then move to

https://laracasts.com/series/laravel-5-fundamentals

From that you will get a really good grasp of PHP and ultimately the core understanding required for Laravel.

I liked the Codecademy PHP and Python lessons. They did a pretty good job of introducing the basics. What I found really helpful, not necessarily for PHP but for computer programming in general, was online classes offered through Coursera and edX. The Harvard cs50 class was hard, but taught me tons and ends with a couple units on PHP and basic web development. The Python classes offered by MIT were also very good.

On Laracasts, Id start with Laravel 5 Fundamentals and Build Your First App. The Code Katas is PHP series is also good for beginners. Once you get through a few tutorials, Id start your own project. The absolute best way to learn how to program is to just play around with the code to try to get it to do what you want. Try to do a something simple that you are interested in. Even if it never makes it on a server, it will do wonders for your coding skills.

@zachleigh, pretty much nailed it, I would recommend the exact same.

I would definitely learn the basics of PHP, programming theories, etc... before attempting to dive into Laravel.

@hasanakyol check out some of these courses available for free on iTunesU

Harvard - This is CS50 2014

Stanford - Programming Methodology

@hasanakyol This is the path i followed when learning PHP all the way up to Laravel.

Firstly i started with PHP Fundamentals by Jeffrey: http://code.tutsplus.com/courses/php-fundamentals and some videos from phpacademy (Youtube). The latest updated playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfdtiltiRHWFD41D_LDomY1Fb-O9MtFqq

Then i started moving on to OOP and at the moment the best one i can recommend is the one here on Laracasts : https://laracasts.com/series/object-oriented-bootcamp-in-php

After that i learned a little bit of MVC from phpacademy : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsCTzGASImQ&list=PLfdtiltiRHWGXVHXX09fxXDi-DqInchFD

And lastly Laravel: https://laracasts.com/series/laravel-5-fundamentals starting with the current versions fundamentals course and then moving into individual lessons as needed.

I only recommend php-the-right-way at this point :

http://www.phptherightway.com/

other replies are great !!!

Dayle Rees is writing a book on PHP. His Code Bright book (about laravel 4) was a good and fun read and helped me learn laravel. Don't know when it will be out, but I bet it will be awesome :)

https://leanpub.com/phpandas?utm_campaign=phpandas&utm_medium=embed&utm_source=daylerees.com

Hi everybody,

Thank you very much for the responses.

See you all in three months.

HA

@hasanakyol we're all here to help, so get reading/watching/listening but most importantly doing and if you have questions, ask away.

I had a vague idea on PHP and programming and I started learning about 8 months ago. I think that in order to learn PHP and Laravel you should learn the basics of programming, I don't really know how profficient you're right now but for example I think you should know:

• The very basics: Data types, variables, constants, arrays, functions, scope, loops (for, while, foreach), switches, logical operators and comparisons and basically all of the basics that are mostly shared on every other structured language.

• Some PHP specifics like superglobals, PHP functions, some of the quirks of the language, escaping strings, concatenation etc. Also you should have a basic understanding on cookies, sessiones, HTTP requests and in general how the web works.

• Some algorithms and basic problem solving. You could follow project Euler or search for basic algorithms. They will allow you to develop abstract thinking and even though there are projects where you won't need this, it will make you a better programmer.

• Some MySQL to get used to dealing with databases inside an outside PHP scripts.

• Nice to know: ternary conditions, anonymous functions, closures, dinamically invoked functions and every concept you can grasp that's "outside" the traditional PHP way. As I was studying PHP and programming in general, I realized that PHP is moving faster than ever and making changes for good so if you can for example understand a little bit of functional programming, a little bit of type hinting then you're going to have an easier time understanding Laravel for example, which is a modern framework

After you've got this kind of stuff down then you should jump to OOP, you could go directly to OOP or even go directly to Laravel but there's going to be a lot of stuff you wouldn't understand so in my opinion is better to have the basics covered up before jumping into a new abstraction (the framework).

Regarding OOP I like the Teamtreehouse introductory series and the Laracasts Bootcamp (I think the Laracasts is better but the other one is "easier")

But even if you know about classes, objects, methods, interfaces, traits or abstract classes you're going to have a tough time understanding everything and you should also check the Design Patterns thaught here and maybe read some of the great books recommended here ( Im reading Matt Zandstra's book and it's pretty cool even I don't understand patterns fully yet).

In general I think there's not a single resource to learn all of this and you should consider I'm a beginner too so my perspective might be just a little bit of what you should really learn to properly understand Laravel and develop with it.

I also think that reading "PHP The Right Way" is a must to understand the current state of the language, I think of it as a guide of the topics I should learn. And you should also learn the basics of Git (Codeschool Try Git is cool), a little bit of Unix commands (Lynda.com "Unix for MacOSX Users" is pretty good on that topic) Composer and the PSR standard (it's all on PHP the right way).

Even if you don't know everything I'm detailing here (I don't know it myself) you should bare in mind that you are going to have to learn it along the journey.

I hope it helps, good luck with your learning.