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Welcome to Part 4 of Learning PHP. If you’ve come here directly, be sure to check out Learn PHP - Introduction for an overview of the entire series!

Being a PHP programmer doesn’t have to be limited to staring at the computer screen and writing lines of code. The PHP community makes it incredibly easy to connect to the thousands of fellow PHP programmers out there. Hooking into the PHP community is a great way to learn more about PHP, find answers to your questions, or just blow off some steam after a long coding session.

In Learn PHP - Part 4: Taking Part in the Community, we’ll explore the many different ways of getting involved in the PHP community. Chatrooms, Forums, User Groups and more await. So let’s get this started.

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Welcome to Part 3 of Learning PHP. If you’ve come here directly, be sure to check out Learn PHP - Introduction for an overview of the entire series!

Expanding Your PHP Resources

If you’ve been following the series, you’ve likely just completed the Zend 101 Tutorial series before coming here. Let me be the second one to say congratulations - after all, you should be the first to pat yourself on the back for a job well done.

The power and flexibility of PHP should be a lot clearer now, and you’re likely excited about going out and building your first big project. This article, Learn PHP - Part 3 is going to highlight some incredible resources to help you on your way.

If on the other hand you’re already familiar with PHP, then welcome to the series. You’ve likely skipped ahead, or skimmed through the first two parts. Learn PHP - Part 3: Expanding Your Resources is the first article aimed at both newcomers to PHP and old programmers alike.

Honing your PHP skills takes a combination of knowledge and experience. Accordingly we’ll start with expanding your knowledge, beginning by reviewing one of the best resources out there: php.net. We’ll focus on how to effectively use php.net, maximizing knowledge while minimizing time spent searching.

Not to neglect experience, this article will conclude with an outline of great PHP communities and solid PHP libraries. You’ll be amazed at how quickly you’ll learn PHP with a community behind you and solid, correctly coded, examples in front of you. So what are we waiting for? Let’s get started.

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Welcome to Part 2 of Learning PHP. If you’ve come here directly, be sure to check out Learn PHP - Introduction for an overview of the entire series!

So who exactly is Zend?

To answer that, let’s go back to 1994. In the infancy of the internet as we know it, Rasmus Lerdorf created the first lines of PHP. Three years later, PHP was in its second revision/release when Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans arrived on the scene.

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Welcome to Part I of Learning PHP. If you’ve come here directly, be sure to check out Learn PHP - Introduction for an overview of the entire series!

PHP lives on the server-side of town

Every programming language has many unique qualities, but they all share one common step - they need to be processed. Processing, or parsing in the case of PHP, takes the raw lines of code and converts it into useful data.

PHP is a server-side language. What does that mean? It means the server is the one responsible for processing the PHP code. In other words, when you write in PHP, the web server reads the code, parses it, and sends the result to the web browser. The web browser takes the information and displays it for everyone to read. You can see this process in the simple chart I made:

Read the rest of Learn PHP - Part 1: Setting up your AMP