In Module 2, I learned how to program with PHP and implement it to my webpage. This module was completely different from the prior module I worked on due to the fact that PHP is a much more complicated and different language than HTML & CSS. While HTML is working with tags, PHP is actual object oriented programming. In PHP, you work with functions, variables, connecting to databases, manipulating files, etc. However, PHP can be embedded into HTML code in order to make it more versatile. The tutorials used to learn PHP were similar to those for HTML & CSS. First, I utilized Codeacademy and W3school tutorials in order to familiarize myself with PHP and get a basic feel for it. Afterwards, I had to read a few chapters from the Dynamic Web Sites handbook. To finish up the module, I followed Eli's PHP tutorials and reading the original PHP manual.
Once again, similar to Module 1, the assignment I found to be the most beneficial were the Codeacademy tutorials we had to go through. The reason behind this is that I had never touched any PHP code before this class. Therefore, it was a very new subject for me and I found it quite intimidating. However, Codeacademy did a terrific job to remove my fear and familiarize me with the general concepts and syntax associated with PHP. Like other object oriented programming languages, I learned that PHP was very similar in terms of the concepts. It used arrays, loops, if/else statements, which I have covered prior to this class for C++ programming. Codeacademy made learning PHP fairly easy for me, which assisted me in the class because I learned how to teach myself at my own pace and be comfortable with the concepts in PHP, which were used throughout the class and tested on.
For my learning artifact, I am going to choose Eli's PHP tutorials due to how well organized they were and the outstanding teacher Eli was. His tutorials were so well structured and made it simple, and also enjoyable to learn PHP. He would speak for a short while, then switch to his computer in order to delineate actual coding examples. This perfetly balanced out the two and did not make learning PHP overwhelming. Also, I am choosing this assignment because I feel like I answered all of the questions to the best of my ability and actual PHP syntax into my website. You can find the tutorials below!