PHP SCRIPTS
PHP Scripts

HOUSEKEEPING
Housekeeping

PERL SCRIPTS
TD Scripts.com

CONTACT US
contact us

New! Guts Or Glory Poker is inspired by the popular casino game Let It Ride(tm) This game written entirely in PHP is currently in beta, but you can play it and let us know what you think. It uses real card graphics, true casino odds, auto shuffles the cards, and only uses one deck of cards. 9's or better to win. Click the 9 of hearts to play!

THE PHP PROJECT ... Kind of like the Blair Witch Project, but much more frightening <g>

Hi, my name is TDavid. I am known for my original Perl scripts over at http://www.tdscripts.com/ and this is my new PHP website. Exactly what's here now and will be happening here in the future is a little unique, I think, so let me share what I'm doing:

When I was first learning Perl programming, I did most of it offline, studying books, visiting references online, making notes, then writing and testing code and then uploading and testing. I have since tried to share some Perl tutorials and references at TD Scripts so that other programmers and Webmasters interested in writing Perl CGI scripts could benefit.  When I decided on Monday December 13, 1999 that I was going to learn PHP, I thought it would be cool to do my studying online. Thus allowing you, Joe and Jane surfer, to actually follow my diary accounts, and coding, as I learn this language. It will be almost like you are sitting next to me as I learn this language. You may not want to do this (heck, you may decide you don't even like me), you may prefer to go out and purchase a book, or download the PHP docs and go that route. There is no perfect way to learn a programming language. Along the way I will be giving you URLs of other websites I've learned from, links to books I'm using to learn, etc. Let me start this off by stating my sole objectives for learning PHP:

I am interested in using PHP to enhance websites dynamically and intergrate with databases, especially for higher end applications or where traffic load is high, like 100,000+ hits a day.  Can PHP do this? I've heard it can, I'm going to find out, and if you come along for the ride with me, you'll find out too.

Have you written down your objective like I did above for learning PHP? Knowing where to start is half the battle of actually starting anything.

This is and yet isn't really a tutorial, per se, it is more like a look over a programmer's shoulder and see how one programmer learned this language. Most times I'll try to follow a logical path something like:

1.  I will go into depth about what I want to learn,
2.  why I wanted to learn it,
3.  and then show you the solution I discover, at the time I discover it :)
4.  you can see this website evolve through the use of PHP

The only assumptions I am making is I want to learn PHP and I want to learn it fast, and I don't need to know who designed PHP or some of the more esoteric functions that I'll never use. I will buy a reference book for that. I want to know how to do the things I know how to do in Perl in PHP.  In fact I want to be able to do some of these things more efficiently and faster using PHP. I will probably draw some comparisons to Perl along the way, but this is not going to be an exercise in how to program in Perl. Visit TD Scripts.com for that kind of stuff.

I am not saying that the way that I'm going to go about learning PHP will be the textbook or the only way to learn PHP, but I will say that it will be useful for those that run a website and want to integrate PHP into their site, because that is my interest in PHP. Have no illusions that you will read all about the things I've screwed up in my testing so you can avoid making the same mistakes.

If you aren't interested in my learning adventures, but are interested in obtaining original PHP CGI scripts I will be writing, then bookmark this URL and come back in a month or two. It may take me longer, or not even this long, but at least you can check up on my progress. Some days I work 18 hours a day and have no time for learning, other days I spend most of the day in a shell reading and learning. One thing is for sure, if you follow this website, you will know what I did for PHP every day I learned something and when I sat down and tried to learn something :) 

At the bottom or top or side there will be navigational links:

Housekeeping - this is information about how the code examples are laid out
Diary - this is my overview account by date of what I did to further my learning in PHP, including code examples, uses, etc.
PHP Scripts - these are the actual PHP scripts I will be writing (or have written already).
PHP Links - useful links for PHP resources
TD Scripts.com - ok buy some Perl scripts, will ya? I don't work for free lol :)

Ok, click a link to the left and get started :) Thanks for coming along.  Oh, one last thing, there maybe will be some blank pages you find, that's because this project is in about as close to real time as I can get.  Also, I am not trying to be an HTML guru, so you may find some of my pages visually stale. This isn't about designing a web site though, this is about learning PHP :)

TDavid

12/17/99
updated 2/15/2000

Watch here for
something cool
to appear in the
near future ...