The PHP Project Guide

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Last updated on 2013-01-31

About the Book

Most programming books will teach you the basics of the language, run through some example applications, filling the pages up with code that could become obsolete in future. Looking at code isn't always a great way to learn.

This book aims to combat that by providing a guide to PHP that will directly affect how you address, build and maintain websites.

Less code, more advice!

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Alex Garrett

I'm a web developer and founder of phpacademy. You can find out more at http://itsmealex.com

1 Introduction
- 1.1 Typical programming books are hard to learn from
2 Who this book is for
3 What you should get from reading this book
4 Errata
5 Useful notations
6 Starting a project
- 6.1 Project examples
- 6.2 What you don’t need
- 6.3 Taking the first steps
  - But what if I just want to learn?
- 6.4 How long should a project take?
7 File structure
- 7.1 Why does file structure matter?
- 7.2 Planning your file structure
- 7.3 Naming files
- 7.4 Watch your extension
- 7.5 Organising classes
8 Development environment
- 8.1 Choosing a text editor
- 8.2 Development envionment settings
- 8.3 Version control software
  - Git
    - GitHub
9 Frameworks
- 9.1 What’s a framework?
- 9.2 More about MVC
- 9.3 Don’t repeat yourself!
- 9.4 What a framework won’t do
- 9.5 The benefits of using a framework
- 9.6 The drawbacks of using a framework
- 9.7 So what next?
10 Following coding standards
- 10.1 Zend Coding Standard
- 10.2 Your own coding style
  - Sort your existing code with a code beautifier
- 10.3 The heredoc syntax
- 10.4 Confused about what to do?
11 Frontend design
- 11.1 What about while learning?
- 11.2 Learning for the frontend
- 11.3 Cutting up your template
- 11.4 Embrace MVC
- 11.5 Template engines
12 Procedural or Object Oriented?
- 12.1 What is Object Oriented Programming?
- 12.2 Tips for learning and retaining
- 12.3 But what about functions?
- 12.4 Is it ok not to use OOP?
- 12.5 Examples in practice
  - Database handler
- 12.6 User class
- 12.7 Grasping OOP
- 12.8 Recommended reading
13 Databases
- 13.1 phpMyAdmin
- 13.2 Planning your database
- 13.3 PDO
- 13.4 Choosing how to communicate with your database
- 13.5 Interacting with your database
- 13.6 A Guestbook example
14 Generic functionality and configuration
- 14.1 Global configuration
- 14.2 Database based configuration
- 14.3 Generic data output
- 14.4 Translations
- 14.5 Translating other site content
15 Commenting code
16 PHP Documentation
- 16.1 Finding what you need
- 16.2 Deprecated functions
- 16.3 Cautions
- 16.4 Browsing for help
17 Speed
- 17.1 A method for testing your page server load time
- 17.2 HTML, CSS, JavaScript and other HTTP Requests
  - Reducing HTML/CSS/JavaScript file size
- 17.3 Loading resources from a CDN
- 17.4 Rendering time
- 17.5 Limit queries
- 17.6 Optimise queries
- 17.7 MySQL or PHP functions?
- 17.8 Searching a database
  - Add a fulltext index
  - Use a search server
- 17.9 Looping
- 17.10 File reading
- 17.11 Limiting user defined values
- 17.12 Caching
  - PHP Accelerators
    - Memcached
    - eAccelerator
    - APC
- 17.13 Caching AJAX requests
18 Security
- 18.1 Why no website is secure
- 18.2 Security first
- 18.3 What else?
- 18.4 Back up
- 18.5 SQL Injection
- 18.6 Magic Quotes
- 18.7 Session and cookie security
  - Where are sessions stored?
- 18.8 CSRF (Cross Site Request Forgery)
- 18.9 Include/require security
- 18.10 File traversal
- 18.11 Important considerations
- 18.12 Error reporting
- 18.13 error_log
- 18.14 Passwords
- 18.15 You online
- 18.16 What next?
- 18.17 Recommended reading
19 Ideas
- 19.1 Coming up with an idea
- 19.2 Monetizing
- 19.3 Get feedback
- 19.4 Start small
- 19.5 Recommended reading
20 Examples
- 20.1 Building a forum
  - User authentication
  - Category listing
  - Listing topics within a category
  - Posts within topics
  - New topics and replying to topics
- 20.2 Pagination
- 20.3 AJAX Content
  - Simple processing of data
21 Hosting your website
- 21.1 Choosing a host
  - Security
  - Configuration
  - Speed
- 21.2 Webserver configuration
- 21.3 PHP configuration
- 21.4 Dedicated server
22 How to learn
- 22.1 Stick with it
- 22.2 Teaching
- 22.3 Books don’t always help
- 22.4 It’ll click
- 22.5 Starting a project
23 The end
- - This book is a work in progress

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