I need like very basic tuturials

legio

Ok, I know html pritty good, if not exelent. but i've been wanting to go to php for a long time but every tutorial I read if just really really confusing.

I think i pritty much know what I'm doing now execpt for the easy part wich ticks me off.

my friend's been hosting my sites for a long time and he has PHP and MySQL support so i know it's me that's the problem

Here's what I don't understand (if anyone could post a link to a tutorial or help me here that would be nice):

I made my page and called it main.php

it's basically a two collumn design with the navigation on the left and the content on the right. now here is where i'm overly confused. Do i make separate HTML files for the naviation and the content? or do I make the navigation on the left and leave the content blank?

and how do I link between pages and keep that layout without it going to the content which really has none (knw what i mean?)

and i won't get to the rest because i think you get the point.

any help at all will be appritiated (SP?)

planetsim

firstly i suggest reading the stickied thread i started up top. It has a good start with PHP and i think i made it fairly easy to understand well i hope anyway.

A good tutorial http://spoono.com its more aimed at the beginning PHP Programmer and has some good start to PHP.

Linking pages is basically the same with HTML. Basically in the end PHP requires HTML (but not all the time you'll find later on when you get more advanced).

legio

Ya, I read a little of it and found it really good, i'm going to use it as a source becasue i have found it a lot more helpful than other "FAQ's" that i've read. after a bit though i tried to skim though to see if you had what i was looking for but didn't see it. I'll go back to it and search harder, and i'll have a look at the site you sugested.

thanks.

mmilano

there's a few tutorials i've written here: http://codenewbie.com/tutorials.php?fid=43

more like code snippets with comments.

mmilano

i think this one is right up your ally: http://codenewbie.com/tutorials.php?tid=726

legio

thanks, i'll check it out.

saidbakr

As a start you may read this tutorial http://www.w3schools.com/php/default.asp
Also You should download the latest PHP Manual in CHM format, it's very usefull and easy to use.
It's found in PHP documentaion on http://www.php.net
.
For your request about your website layout. Using include(), will make life so easy.
I'll suppse that your two columns page layout is built on a table has one row and to columns so you may able to do the following with your main.php page

<table>
<tr>
<td><?include('nav.php')?></td>
<td><?include('content.php')?></td>
</tr>
</table>

For nav.php
you will do something analog to the following

<a href="main.php?myvar=name&value=legio">My Name</a><br>
<a href="main.php?myvar=age&value=25">My Age</a><br>
<a href="main.php?myvar=email&value=legio@php.eg">My Email</a><br>

For content.php
you will do something analog to the following too

<?
switch ($_REQUEST['myvar']){
case "name":
echo "<h1>My Name is:</h1>";
echo "<h1>".$_REQUEST['value']."</h1>";
break;
case "age":
echo "<h1>My Age is:</h1>";
echo "<h1>".$_REQUEST['value']."</h1>";
break;
case "email":
echo "<h1>My Email is:</h1>";
echo "<h1>".$_REQUEST['value']."</h1>";
}

of course this is so simple, but it may be regarded as the basic concepts to make some thing more comlicated
I hope this helps you.