2. PHP and MySql for dynamic web sites, by Larry Ullman, published by peachpit press in 2005 30/01/2008
After I had discovered what PHP could do I had to decide what to produce as a final product. I decided to build a website where a user could visit the site and find their ideal super car and then talk on a small forum about the car they had chosen. I thought this would give me a good insight into basic and advanced PHP code.
The learning plan I produced has worked out pretty well. The time I allocated has worked out just right to complete each task which I am very happy with. I would have liked more time to learn the basics of PHP more but as we were under a tight deadline to produce a finished working product I think I made the right choice to use most of my time developing the actual PHP website.
I found the book “PHP and MySql for dynamic web sites”, by Larry Ullman very useful when researching and learning the basics of PHP. The book explained things is simple terms and showed examples whenever possible.
I do find it hard to research into things without actually using what I am trying to learn so I was eager to try some of the tutorials that were on the internet. I used tutorials from the w3cschools.org website. It was quite annoying at first uploading every example to the host server just to see one line of code on the screen.
Once I had grasped the basics I discovered some similarities to when I was learning CSS. I think the basics are similar to CSS in some respects, both codes have a number of different ways in which to do the same thing and naming things correctly is crucial later on in the process.
After I had completed all the basic level tutorials on the w3cschools website I discovered that I would have to use a combination of PHP and MySQL if I was to achieve my goal of creating a Guestbook on my final product. This wasn’t something I worried about at first because I had bought a book on PHP and MySQL so I felt prepared for the task at least.
Creating a MySQL database using a text editor turned out to be very hard. I knew from the PHP tutorials I had done if you enter the wrong code somewhere the web page will display a large error message that I didn’t understand which made it hard to figure out why this had happened.
I thought this was multiplied when trying to connect to a database. After a number of hours setting up the database I realised my web host didn’t support MySQL. This annoyed me because I was doing everything right but it was never going to work with my web host.
After upgrading my web hosting account to one that supported MySQL I was able to set up a small forum with four columns that would work for my final product. Although the PHP research and learning the code had gone well I was nervous about implementing the PHP at this stage of the assignment because I knew which PHP methods I would be using and that the code could get very complicated.
I tried not to spend too long developing screen designs because I knew this was a technical exercise more than a creative one. I did however want to create a website that was eye catching and that a user might remember. I wanted to have a posh driveway image that I could cut each car to fit to look as if it is on the drive after a user has made their selection.
I think the idea was a good one and now was the time to show it using PHP. I tried to write the code using the If, Else method but found it to be quite long and overly complex, I discovered I could get the same results with less code using the switch method.
Writing the code was very hard work and I set a large amount of time in one day to get my head around it. I think this was a good method for me because it did turn out to be, as I expected a fairly complex and large amount of code. The most important thing I had realised from my research was that naming things correctly is very important and can save a massive amount of time.
When developing the code I realised the site would be much larger than I planned. I had planned to create a site with 4 questions with 4 answers this would mean 256 possible end results. I decided to change this to 4 questions with 2 answers because this would only have 16 possible outcomes.
Writing the PHP code was hard for me because I don’t consider myself good with small details that can turn out to be very important. I am happy with the website I produced because it is what I set out to do. I would have liked to cut the cars out with more detail and then paste them on the drive background image but the website does show I can learn and adapt PHP code to create a dynamic website.
If I had more time I would add a certain amount of error validating code so a user could not add certain words or numbers to the forum and create a username and password protection access to the site. I have looked at this and I do think I could learn it with more time. I think I have achieved what I aimed for but I have discovered I don’t want a job working solely with PHP but I can handle the basics if required.
I think this assignment has highlighted how I learn and that if I push myself to learn something new that is not easy to learn straight away I can achieve good results. I have enjoyed this assignment. I think I like the end product so much because it is dynamic and is a lot different to anything else I have produced on the course so far.
I have decided to source images off the internet and disregarded copyright issues in some respects. This was a conscious decision I made because if I did not do this then there was no way I could get the quality of cars I need for my website. I think even if the owner of one of the images I have used stumbles on my site and sees the cars they would not recognise the image. I have cut the background out completely so it could be any image of the car. I have also skewed and edited the image settings on many of the images so they look different from the original. I don’t think the website would work without me doing his and I think it needed it from a users point of view.