Welcome to the Treehouse Community
Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.
Looking to learn something new?
Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.
Start your free trial
Rick Yentzer
5,885 PointsPHP Course Direction
I was replying to another post on the forum when I went on a tangent so I thought it best to just start a new thread.
I've used Wordpress for a number of years and designed a few of my own themes. However, I want to be able to build a dynamic site from scratch and understand why feature X does what it does.
For example, I have a client on Wordpress. Thanks to Treehouse, it is now responsive. Wordpress has been fine so far, but I (and the client) want to add the ability for the customer to login and pay bills, change their security codes, and update their information when needed.
While WP has served me well for basic sites and blogs, it's time to learn more so that I can offer my clients more than just the basics. I started as a designer but I really enjoy the programming side! I
I want to add that I'm not new to basic programming. I understand variables, functions, loops, and conditionals. I have read Intro to Programming (Ruby), a few JS books, and actually enjoy the command line.
Randy Hoyt what is the direction are the PHP courses going to take here at Treehouse?
I want to be able to create a customer login, with their personal information safe and secure in a database, then give them the ability to modify it. Is that just too much for an advanced beginner to hope to be able to do? Will Treehouse teach me these things?
Is PHP the way to go, or given my prior knowledge should I jump on the ROR bandwagon, or python? I love building websites. I just want to move beyond the basics.
When do the php frameworks come into play? What about laravel, Symfony, Codeigniter?
Man, this web stuff can be overwhelming!
Thanks,
3 Answers
Jason Seifer
Treehouse Guest TeacherHey Rick Yentzer I'm not sure what is on the PHP roadmap but you may want to check out "Build a Simple Ruby on Rails Application." In there we set up a small social network with sign up/sign in/sign out. It doesn't cover everything you're interested in but it's a start.
Randy Hoyt
Treehouse Guest TeacherAfter I finish Mike's list of enhancements in the current project (my second project, "Enhancing a Simple PHP Application"), I'll next look at integrating with a database and using Ajax to talk to the server without refreshing the page in my third project. Those three projects will all involve the Shirts 4 Mike site. (That third project should come out later this year.) After that, I plan to build a project using a PHP framework -- something similar to the Ruby on Rails project Jason mentioned.
In general, I'd say that building your own customer login system from scratch would be too much for an advanced beginner. There's just a lot of things to take into account. Frameworks like Ruby on Rails or Laravel can handle a lot of the nitty-gritty details for you, and I would definitely recommend trying one. You can even extend WordPress to do the kind of things you are talk about: it already has user information, and I've built a number of sites with WordPress like the ones you've described.
Should you learn Ruby on Rails? If you don't mind the command line and you have time to invest in learning a new technology, then I would definitely give it a try. Work through Jason's courses, and see what you think. Using WordPress or a PHP framework would probably be easier to get up and running if you just want it for a specific project, but I think you'd be better off as a developer if you take the time to work in a new environment.
Rick Yentzer
5,885 PointsThank you Jason and Randy for your responses. I've finished the first php course, but I'm going back through it a second time. I started the RoR course and once I finish that one, I'm going to look into the Laravel framework.
BTW, there is a certain employer I'm interested in that has moved their code base over to RoR, from ColdFusion, so that's incentive to look into RoR.
Enjoying the courses!