Welcome and tut letter

Hi all!

Welcome to the PHP course. The course web site date had a little typo in it - the tut letter will be made available 11 July, but hopefully end of this week.

For now, please start with the course introduction:

The course introduction consists of 13 self-study sections (topics), which we have licensed from Home and Learn, and which you will find on the CD. You want to start off by clicking on the following file on your CD: CSD1W1S\html\php\php.html.

You should actively work through the tutorials (do not simply read it!). The purpose of the Home and Learn tutorial is to introduce you to the basics of PHP programming. You may well ask why we use a tutorial that is freely available on the Internet as part of this course. The answer, besides that it is a very good tutorial(!) is that this course is about providing you with support and guidance whilst you learn PHP (from wherever), and we use whatever online material we can find to provide you with different perspectives. In line with forum participation, we also expect you to post the URL’s of good sites you have found and which really helped. That is the nature of programming, and PHP programming in particular. It is open sourced. There is no one way of coding 20 lines of code.

You need to work through each section, using the handbook as a side companion.

You do not need to hand in any work, but at the end of each section, you need to post your progress on the discussion forum. In the discussion forum you will find a list of topics e.g. PHP Section One - An Introduction to PHP (if the topic is not available, then create one please. Do not create a topic if it already exists!!!). Your message can be a general comment on the section completed, e.g. what you found difficult, confusing, did not understand or valuable, or you can simply comment that you have successfully completed the section. If you have questions on that section, ask them inside the topic.
Should you wish to post a topic outside the content of the course, you are welcome.

The tut letter will contain further information as to how the course will proceed.

I've joined this forum a little late but have done sections 1 through 10 ... Just wondering if there is any news on the first assignment, will look around the forum to see if I can find some info though ...

@BrendonCon It doesn't sound like you have tutorial letter 101 which explains how we're going to be assessed for this course. You can download it from the course website. The address is in your welcome letter which you should have received with your CD by mail.

@Lisa ... I think I got it, read back, its that 16 page pdf yes?

@BrendonCon Yes, that's it. Section 5 explains how this course is different from most others, and how we're being assessed instead of the conventional assignments and exams.

you just mentioned the first assignment, where to find it man please let me know i only have a cd but i just downloaded letter 101 now

@masixole Have you come right now? If you've got Tut Letter 101 then you should be fine. This course is graded unconventionally. Read section 5 of the tut letter for the full explanation.

HI Mac

I know this is a php course. Just a question though, if you must have lengthy pieces of code in HTML in the project, for instance the forms and tables, instead of using "echo" and escaping "\" characters constantly, would one get penalised for using heredoc?

Language: PHP
$var = <<<ABC
HTML code here. . .
ABC;
 
echo $var;

You can use that by al means - it is a PHP function.

Hey guys! My computer got fried by the lightning the other night, can anyone send me the tutorial letter with the project breakdown again? I still have my project files all on falsh drive but I don't have the pdf anyone sadly ...

@BrendonCon, Hi there.sorry to hear that but atleast you still have your project files...i can send you what you have requested but your email is hidden.

@77698428Sandra - Yeah definitely, so something to be thankful for, bran new i7 though Cool you can email me on brendon@hellofirstview.com .. Thanks so so much!

@BrandonCon, Have you received the tutorial letter yet?

@collins - yeah I did have it saved on my desktop, have read it once before but my machine died and a just needed to get a copy again ...