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Welcome to Tracks

Treehouse Tracks are guided curriculums that cover all relevant Courses and Workshops necessary to master a subject. Treehouse’s learning library includes dozens of Tracks on a variety of topics including web design, programming, and more. With Compass, you’ll also be able to test out of subjects you already know, and create a custom curriculum for your learning goals.

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21 hours Track

Beginning PHP


Roughly 80% of all websites use PHP development now, including many Fortune 500 companies and top technology startups. Since its debut in 1995, it’s become an extremely popular choice for web developers. This Track will teach you the fundamentals of this widely-used programming language.

PHP, a server-side (or "backend") language, is commonly used by people who want to build a simple, dynamic website quickly and effortlessly. PHP development is very versatile—open-ended, and leaving a lot of freedom up to the developer.

You'll need to know PHP to be a Wordpress developer, a perennial, in-demand role. PHP development is also integral in a lot of web authentication work, online security, and form creation.

To start your PHP basics learning in this Track, you'll establish some HTML and CSS basics. Next, some foundational principles in PHP, like what it is and how it's used.

The next part of the Track focuses on PHP arrays and control structures, and then PHP functions. Then, you'll move along to error handling and dev environments basics.

To wrap up your Beginning PHP learning, you'll build a simple, functional website using the skills you've acquired throughout the Track. This is a great takeaway for your portfolio!

By the end of this Track, you’ll have the basic programming knowledge to build your second PHP website...since you just built your first!

  • An entry-level salary for the technologies covered in this track is about $60,000 / yr on average.

  • Some companies that use these technologies regularly include: Google, Facebook, Yahoo, YouTube, Wikipedia, Flickr, LinkedIn, WordPress, Digg, Intel, Pinterest, and Twitter