PHP Developer: Tutorials and Video Lectures

Posted on by Gaurav Kapoor
An elephant with PHP written on back

Adding this blog post to list down all the skills and technologies that every PHP developer should know along with the links for tutorials. Although you are free to follow the order of your choice I would recommend going by the sequence mentioned in this post for the best understanding of advanced topics. I have added links for both reading tutorials as well as video lectures/courses so that you can learn these in your preferred way.

HTML 

Do not skip this topic considering it to be very easy or basic. Understanding HTML in-depth and keeping yourself updated is important for the development of web applications as well as debugging issues visible in a browser. Going through a simple tutorial once should be enough for learning HTML. Here are some links that you should definitely check:

CSS

Well, you might never have to write CSS code yourself if your focus is only on PHP or back end development, It’s a good idea to have a basic understanding of how CSS works as almost all websites use CSS. Check out the following links to learn CSS:

JavaScript

JS is another common technology that is used in almost all websites. Some of the websites use JS for specific features and some websites are complex JS apps themselves. Knowledge of JS is important for a PHP developer for various reasons such as understanding the complete working of a web application, providing data to a different system and understanding how it is consumed, to be in a position to decide how would a decoupled features would be implemented etc. Some of the frameworks used nowadays have subsystems for easily handling AJAX requests from the PHP code itself and working with those you should know about JavaScript. Few links for learning basic JS.

If you are planning to become a ‘Full Stack’ developer, you can also learn React or Vue JS.

SQL

You should have a good hand in using SQL to write database queries as most of the PHP frameworks and CMSs are high-level PHP-MySQL applications. One of the main reasons for using PHP or rather any programming language is to have the ability to perform CRUD operations on a database based on our requirements and thus SQL is a must-have skill for any PHP developer. Knowing SQL will help you understand the subsystems created by various frameworks and content management systems for database interaction very easily. Here are some links for learning SQL:

It is also very common to use NoSQL databases with PHP and you can also learn more about those as an additional skill.

PHP

Once you have a basic understanding of all the topics discussed in this post, you can start learning PHP. Now, since it’s a full-fledged programming language, it will be very easier to learn if you have studied or worked with any other programming language. But don’t worry even if it’s the first programming language that you would be studying. There are very good tutorials online for beginners. Here is a list of all the important links that you should check:

Try to practice as much as you can and pick up dummy project work as implementing your skills is key to success in any field.

Frameworks

Core PHP and other web basic skills are important for working on any PHP application but not enough to build something of commercial importance or an enterprise-scale application. Learning a widely used framework will make you capable of building a modern and useful application. Here are some of the frameworks that you can target, go through their official websites, check out tutorials and documentation, and try to get involved with their communities for enhancing your skills further. Haven’t added any other link than the official website as at this stage you should be capable enough to figure out from where you can learn something.

CMS

After learning 1 framework well, you can shift towards learning how to develop web applications using a Content Management System. CMS by definition are supposed to be software providing you with a UI and various features to easily store and display content to an end-user. But in reality, they are much more complex and capable of building applications beyond imagination and require a good amount of customisation that can only be done after understanding how they work completely. Here are some popular CMS that you can explore and target as your primary skillset.

Bonus Links and Concepts 

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