Intermediate PHP for the leisure market

Intermediate PHP for the leisure market - training course

A weekend getting the very best out of PHP

Duration: 2 days • Price: $680.00 or £480.00 +VAT (with hotel room), or $500.00 or £360.00 +VAT (without room), • Venue: Melksham, England

COURSE START DATES

Usually scheduled to meet customer needs or run as a private course. Please email for details

DESCRIPTION

This is a two day weekend course which is designed for the delegate who writes and maintains web site(s) for local leisure groups, charities, or just for the pleasure of his own hobby - he does the work because he enjoys it, and not because he's paid for it.

Arrive the evening before the course formally starts, check in and meet the tutor and other delegates. That evening, we'll also talk informally about exactly what you want to get from the weekend so that we can tailor accordingly.

On the Saturday morning, we'll cover some of the mysteries of subjects like associative arrays, sorting, and regular expressions before moving on to cover best practise in PHP - how to write code that you can easily modify and understand later, and which is robust and secure in operation.

Lunch is provided

Multiple page applications, where users log in and follow on from one page to another, are a major element of PHP usage. We'll show you how to design and write such systems, including an introduction to 4 layer model and "MVC" techniques which allow you to keep the workings seperated from the look and feel - letting you make changes later, and to delegate the artistic elements of your site to a graphics artist, while you look after the code without the need to also learn another complete skill set.

On Sunday morning, we'll take a look at some of the standard modules that are available free of charge to you - to insert a feed from another site on your page, to identify where in the world your visitors are coming from and whether they're regular visitors or have just arrived via a search, and so on. We'll then take a look at a couple of standard PHP applications - the exact selection to be made based on what the delegates want, but we may be looking at Drupal, Simple Machines Forum and OS Commerce (for example), seeing how they're installed and tailored so that you can use the power of the standard PHP applications to do exactly what you want.

After Lunch on Sunday (which we'll provide - but nothing too heavy as you'll not want to fall asleep in front of the TV!), we'll have a look at other modules and facilities of interest - delegates may wish to look at dynamic web site tracking and providing feedback to users on popular pages. They may wish to look at genarating graphics, or at interfacing to Google maps, or at Thumbnail and Image upload and library issues.

Later in the afternoon, everyone will work on projects that relate to their own use of PHP (please bring your samples and data along) and we'll give you a helping hand to start making use of what you've learned over the weekend - so that you leave us (we can offer you a lift to the station for the evening trains) firing on all cylinders. Read more about our weekend courses - how they run in general - here 231f

PREREQUISITES

A working knowledge of PHP - enough to put together a straightforward page. Attendance on a beginning PHP for the leisure market or equivalent practical experience.

Getting the most from your Well House Consultants course [Link]

SUBJECT BACKGROUND

PHP is a one of the most commonly used tools in the provision of server side programming on the web. Uses include anything from inserting a user editable message of the day onto your home page, through sign up and request-for-information forms to complete forum and on line ordering systems, through automated graphics, user identification, dynamic validation via AJAX and REST, and much more.

COURSE CONTENT

Course Summary: [Link]

PHP Revision (module H300) The PHP language. Variables, conditionals and loops. Function, Arrays, methods and objects. File and database handling. Form input elements and superglobals.

Designing PHP-Based Solutions: Best Practice (module H115) Thinking through your design. Tools to help you design. Designing a smaller application example. A note on using PHP in a Web environment. Writing maintainable code. Code documentation. Use of functions and include files. Version issues. Coding Standards. And all the languages in one file?. Writing code for different databases. Miscellany. Error handling and software testing. Bad characters. Expect the unexpected and check everything. Error numbering and handling. Data validation, sessions, XML/XSLT, SQL.

MVC, 4 layer model and templating (module H302) How to design and structure your application. Model - View - Controller. Top level, business logic, web helpers and template. Objects - how and when to use them. Handling the look and feel with DreamWeaver. A little on database design. Configuration files. Shopping cart applications.

Tips and Techniques (module H312) Singular v plural. Reporting zero answers and making suggestions. Cardinal values and the child called "Drop database". Upper case and lower case names - making good addresses. Databases. Sorting. Specifying an API that can be expanded.

Some extra PHP modules (module H401) There are many extra PHP modules available from Pear, Pecl and elsewhere that can save you time recoding when you're writing a new application, and can then save you ongoing maintainance too. We look at some of the more popular modules in this section - these are not complete applications, but building blocks. magpieRSS - for handling RSS data feeds from other sites. maxmind GEOiP - for identifying the geographic location of visitors.

Open Source Applications in PHP (module H400) There are many open source applications already written in PHP and available for you to use - though you'll need to know some PHP in some cases to help you tailor them as you install them, and to change their look and feel, and add in other modules and features. In this module, we'll give you a very brief overview of some of the more common of theses applications, and we'll install and tune an example application or two on our own test servers so that you can learn about the issues involved. SimpleMachines Forum and PHPbb forums. Blogging software such as WordPress. Wikis such as MediaWiki. Drupal - a Content Management Platform. Joomla, a dynamic portal ending and CMS. Moodle - a course management system (course NOT content!). osCommerce, an online shop. phpmyadmin for administration of database servers over the web.

Putting it all together (module H310) A practical session in which each delegate. will undertake a different practical to try out. the most revelant techniques learned so far on. the course. Delegates are encouraged to bring their. own data along, and to go away with useful code.

TUTOR and COURSE AUTHOR

Graham Ellis - graham@wellho.net [email] [about Graham]

VENUE

Melksham, Wiltshire , England. A taxi transfer can be arranged if you'll be arriving by air from United States. Private Courses can be arranged on site in your country.
Public courses run at Well House Manor - our own purpose fitted training centre and business hotel / conference centre in Melksham.
• Download Melksham Map - [pdf file (750k)] • Google Map - [Link]

PRICE

1 student	2 students	3 students	For 4 or more students from the same company, please consider a private course.
With hotel room $680.00 ($816.00 inc VAT) or £480.00 (£576.00 inc VAT) Without room $500.00 ($600.00 inc VAT) or £360.00 (£432.00 inc VAT)	With hotel rooms $1360.00 ($1632.00 inc VAT) or £960.00 (£1152.00 inc VAT) Without rooms $1000.00 ($1200.00 inc VAT) or £720.00 (£864.00 inc VAT)	With hotel rooms $2040.00 ($2448.00 inc VAT) or £1440.00 (£1728.00 inc VAT) Without rooms $1500.00 ($1800.00 inc VAT) or £1080.00 (£1296.00 inc VAT)
Notes: • All of our rooms are double or twin, and the residential rate quoted is for single occupancy. The second delegate sharing a room pays just the non-redidential rate. • Hotel rooms are available for arrival the night before the course starts, for departure after the end of the course on the last day.

FOLLOW UPS

Our Object Oriented Programming in PHP and PHP Techniques Workshop provide more advanced PHP training on specific elements of the language and its use, and our library and resources (including access to the tutor) are available after the weekend.

Upon completion of your course, you'll have online access to the source code of all the examples from the course, and you'll have access to the "Ask the Tutor" forum where you can raise questions. We also encourage you to email the tutor, and to visit us again to use our library as appropriate.

Certification? - [Link] 20a3

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION

Public (scheduled) courses -- http://www.wellho.net/course/ctc.html
For more information about our public courses in general, such as class size, course times, materials provided, special requests, accommodation list, finding our centre, etc.
Terms and Conditions -- http://www.wellho.net/net/terms.html
Covering topics such as delegate substitution, payment, cancellation policy and other matters.