LAMP School

[_mg_]

Hey everyone,

This is my first time on this forum. It's really kewl. I am a bit lost (you will find out why in a minute) so please excuse me if I am not posting this in the right spot.

I was wondering if anyone knew a college that teaches LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySql/Php)?

I am actually just starting out and know nothing about programming, so I don't know if this is a good place to start. If not, what do you all think I should learn first?

I have just worked on Frontpage a handfull of times, but other than this I know nothing, not even html.

My goal is to become a Web Developer/Designer. I have quite a few websites that I want to work on and make user friendly and I want to be able to know the ins and outs of making a website to the point that I could probably teach others or do scripts for others, etc....

Your help would be greatly appreciated.

mg

[sde]

check out one of our advertisers: http://www.carriglearning.com/courses/cd_akc_620.shtml

other than that, a lot of colleges teach web development of some sort .. specifically LAMP is going to be a little more tricky to find.

books and sites like this will help a lot if you are a self paced learner, but yeah, otherwise school is probably the best bet.

what area are you in?

[redhead]

Welcome to the board _mg_,
I agree on everything Mike say.
If you plan on learning webdevelopment through php/mysql you have to achieve some knowledge of the languages them selves ie. php/sql Here at CodeNewbie we can be a great resource, but only if you know some form of the language (that beeing beginner level or advanced)
When teaching from scratch it is a big challenge, not only for you, but everyone involved, so naturaly it would be best if you would sign up for some classes, but should you decide to be selftaught, then feel free to ask any question you might have here.

Here is a few pointers regarding the LAMP items.

Linux
When doing webdevelopment/design there isn't that much knowledge required in this field, unless you plan on running your own server, however given that many hosting companies provide a login shell you better know the basics.
The Linux Command is a great reference, when you want to be able to look up any command you want to use. But it's a bit pricy, instead theres a ton of sites online where you can get the same info, here are a few on the linux command reference (1; 2; 3; 4; 5)
If you plan on running your own server, The Linux Documentation Project is a good place to start. But for a real usage you would need to be familliar with atleast vi(m), tar (1; 2), sed (1; 2), gawk (1; 2), cron, etc.
As you can see, the scope of Linux is so large, that I won't walk you through it all in this thread.

Apache
When serving webpages, Apache is the webserver of your choice, there are all the info you could possibly need to get from their Online documentation

MySQL
This is the database, which will hold your dynamic data that you can fetch using php, perl, C/C++ etc.
Eventho the MySQL project provides a vide spred online documentation, I find it rather confusiong to read and search through, it is simply not as great as the one for php provided by php.net, therefor here are my preferede references (1; 2; 3; 4; 5)

Php
As previusly mentioned php is a language, which among others can be used to interact with MySQL, we here at CodeNewbie provides the entire Php Manual which is a great read, for any difficulty regarding the use of which functions it provides, the online function search is the best there is, but it requires you know the language, and know what functions you should be using.

[_mg_]

sde: Thank you so much for the link and the info.

redhead: The breakdown of LAMP along with the links is very useful. I really appreciate it. Thanks alot.

I live in MD. I am open to learning this all on my own. I wanted to also take online classes (not sure yet if carriglearning offers that) if possible.
I am able to learn this full time as well and have already started doing so.

I just feel like I am missing something or doing it wrong. I have been doing PHP and MySql tutorials and I will be going through the links redhead posted today.

I tried implementing an instruction a tutorial gave me by going to my blank website page and on MS Frontpage, going to the HTML section and putting in the script the tutorial told me to and then I saved it, uploaded the site, and all I got back was the same script looking at me. No feedback form (which is what I was supposed to script/code) came to life when I uploaded the site and nothing magical happened as I thought it would. This is when I figured I must be doing it wrong and starting in the wrong place.

Is there a strong basic knowledge I need to know before I get into LAMP? Can I just straight learn PHP first without knowing HTML? As I have been trying it, I feel like I'm missing something.

Currently, I have a host (site5.com) and it makes it look easy to implement everything, yet I am unable to do any scripting/coding on my own via Frontpage, without it turning up in the same code format....and I am just starting out. I want to do so much with the sites yet all I can do is write on them and change the fonts like with MS Word.

mg

[redhead]

Originally Posted by _mg_

I tried implementing an instruction a tutorial gave me by going to my blank website page and on MS Frontpage, going to the HTML section and putting in the script the tutorial told me to and then I saved it, uploaded the site, and all I got back was the same script looking at me. No feedback form

This is due to the fact that php is an interpreted language, the webserver needs to parse the page (dont know any better expression) and call an enterpritor, in order to tell the server, that your page is containing some code, which needs to be enterpreted, you give the file an extension of .php instead of .html this tells the server, that it needs to parse the page through the php enterrpretor.
And your php-code is encapsulated by <?php and ?> which tells the enterpretor, here is the actual code,m which needs to be run/executed.

This beeing said, it is only possible to serve php-pages, if the server supports it.. I don't know what your deal with your provider is, and what they accept (if they accept ASP instead of PHP) but your account needs to be setup to support php pages.

Originally Posted by _mg_

Is there a strong basic knowledge I need to know before I get into LAMP? Can I just straight learn PHP first without knowing HTML? As I have been trying it, I feel like I'm missing something.

When displaying things in a web-environment, you need to send the html codes to teh browser, thus you need to send what ever output you want from your script formed through html layout.
With frontpage you get an easy way of dealing with how things look, the WYSIWYG effect, this is OK for just your static pages, but when making a dynamic page, you need to know how your html code is going to be formed after a run of this code, if you fetch 10 items from your database, then you know you only have to display those 10 items.. But if your fetch routine is random, and returns 8 or 9 or 2 items, then you need to understnad HTML enough in order to know your code is scalable to nomatter what type of output your dynamic page will produce.
When editign a page in frontpage, try looking at the "code" section instead of the WYSIWYG section, then you'll see all the magic thats behind it all, it is also in this code section you should be typing your php-code.