How to get started on your first PHP/MySQL app

Posted by The Technocrat | Filed under Coding, Geeky

Step 3: the minor details

Until now, I've been concentrating on the most important part of a web application. This part should go back and forth in your head, about what data you will store, what info you will be able to display by linking tables of information together, etc. Do all of this planning several times over until you are sure it is the way you want. Once you start programming PHP that is dependent on tables being named a certain way, etc., you're pretty much stuck with it, or will be forced to do a lot of re-do work.

This isn't a PHP tutorial, but I chose PHP because it is the easiest data-retrieval language to learn. In fact, if you know HTML, you can easily learn PHP n a few hours. The same goes for MySQL, although it may take you a try or two to learn how to pull the data you want out of the tables in a format you can use (arrays, etc).

I learned PHP and MySQL in these tutorials, and am able to make just about any web app I please, after proper forethought into what I want to do.

I wouldn't recommend making your own php/MySQL server starting out, but by all means, have a go if you want. My advice would be to check if your hosting provider (if you have a web site) supports PHP and MySQL. They probably do, since php and MySQL are immensely popular, and aren't going anywhere.

Well, hopefully you aren't disappointed that this isn't a PHP or MySQL tutorial, but as I mentioned above, immediately jumping onto PHP and MySQL is a terrible way to design a web application.


To recap, design the app on paper, in a spreadsheet, or whatever. Plan out what info you will be storing, and how you are going to mix your data tables to provide a service. Plan everything out ahead of time, and you won't have to go back and re-do anything later (like when you forgot to
gather your 10,000 user's zip codes or something)

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Comments (3) | April 28th, 2006

3 Responses to “How to get started on your first PHP/MySQL app”

  1. neoncheez Says:
    April 29, 2006 at 10:56 pm

    good basic article, it was fluent. are you going to write more on the subject?

  2. The Technocrat Says:
    April 30, 2006 at 8:21 am

    sure am, gotta start out slow though… :-)

  3. AtariBoy Says:
    May 2, 2006 at 9:54 am

    A good read, only thing i disagree with is Zoomr, i think its a shameless copy of flickr with 1 or 2 little aditions. Its not anything special they just took flickrs idea and added a little bit more.

    Grrrrr

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