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PHP Enhancing a Simple PHP Application Integrating Validation Errors Introducing the Project

Lonnie Parker
Lonnie Parker
5,964 Points

How much is "enough"?

I really enjoyed the first "Build a Simple PHP Application" course, but I wanted to know how much more is necessary to ensure I have a sufficient e-commerce site? I really want to get started on my own e-commerce site (I have a few products I'd like to sell), but I wouldn't want to build it based solely on the principles taught in the first course, and then have to modify everything all over again to accomodate the new lessons learned in the "Enhancing..." course. I'm sure this becomes a philosophical question, but, for example, if I desire to take the skills learned thus far, and create a similar, single-product site (MAYBE adding one other product), how necessary is it to proceed with enhancing that site through this next course, and incorporating concepts like MVC? I'm not opposed to the extra work and I'll likely continue on with this "Enhancing" course, but it'd be nice to get some perspective on the level of fidelity people have found the "Enhancing..." course useful for wrt to creating and launching their own sites. Furthermore, is there any information on why these two courses were removed from the PHP Track and archived at all?

1 Answer

I would recommend going through the entire shirts4mike courses, especially if you're launching an e-commerce site!

However if you're looking to get started sooner, you could start selling on an existing platform (like shopify or ebay) until your site is ready ;) There wouldn't be any harm in that!

If I was building an e-commerce site, I would certainly take some of the lessons and advice from this course, but it's largely outdated now. I would suggest taking a look at the [http://teamtreehouse.com/library/laravel-basics](Laravel course) and the new building websites in php course. You can then combine modern principles with the information given in shirts4mike to get a really great (and secure!) shop up and running.

This pathway would be especially useful if you're looking for users to authenticate (reigster / log in) now or in the near future.

Hope this helps!

Lonnie Parker
Lonnie Parker
5,964 Points

Thanks Tom, it does help! I will consider this moving forward. I appreciate it.

Sam Deacon
Sam Deacon
2,650 Points

can we still follow the laravel course with laravel 5? or do we have to force install the older version?

I'm sure treehouse has a mamoth tast of staying up to date, but then the changes implemented in laravel 5/5.1 were definitely worthwhile

Sure! But you'll have to be ready for changes etc... All of which are pretty well documented on the Laravel change logs. You also have the Treehouse forum :)

I would recommend doing it in Laravel 5.* - but if it becomes too tricky, it's easy to fallback to Laravel 4