Author: Keith Smith

If you are an inspiring PHP Programmer or an old hat PHP Developer you should have a blog. A blog can help you stand out. In this article I will offer some guidance on blogging, why you should blog, types of blogs, doing research, how to rank, and much more.

Why You Should Blog

If you are trying to break into PHP Programming, a blog may help you do so. If you are a seasoned PHP Programmer blogging may help you also. Blogging is one more thing you can show a prospective employer. It could lead to opportunities that you see as unattainable or even opportunities you had not considered. A blog will set you apart from your peers. And it could be good for the community. Yes we would like to hear your perspective, hear your opinions, and hear your ideas.

Types of Blogs

You can blog for one or more of the following reasons :

Inform – You may want to help people understand or you may want to influence them. Some bloggers share their knowledge and expertise. This is a great way to contribute to your community.

Business Leads – Blogging is a great way to create a way to generate business leads. Organic search is a great marketing plan for your business.

Become seen as an authority – As you write more and more and share your knowledge you will become an authority within your niche.

Influence – Blogging is a great way to influence. Taking your experience, your ideas, your vision, and rolling them into a blog is a great way to begin influencing your target audience.

Choose Your Niche

In the context of a PHP programmer your niche will more than likely be your area of expertise. If you are a WordPress plugin developer, that is your niche. If you are a Magento Developer, then Magento development is your niche.

Do your Keyword Research

This is where you start when starting a blog. Doing keyword research is very important when it comes to blogging. You will want to be sure to write about what people are searching for. We are taking about a blog that will further your carrier and I’ll bet you would like some organic traffic as well. When doing your keyword research you might find your niche that is inside your niche. Let me explain. Say you are a Drupal Developer. Drupal 8 comes out and you write reviews and try to influence the community. That is a niche within your Drupal Developer role. We cannot be everything to everybody, that is why we specialize and that is our niche.

Make a Plan And Follow Your Plan

Make a formal written plan. Then follow your plan. Do not allow yourself to become distracted. This does not mean you cannot modify your plan as you go, what it means is make a plan and work your plan.

Use WordPress

Now that you have performed your keyword research and determined your niche, it is time to start working on your blog. WordPress is by far that most popular blogging platform, and is very easy to SEO. As you probably know WordPress is very mature, free, simple, and does not need a lot of server resources. WordPress is ideal for blogging.

VPS Hosting and Plesk for Your WordPress Blog

VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. I am a fan of VPS that run Plesk for server administration. Great platform. One can manage the entire server from the Plesk control panel. Plesk provides for the management of your server as a mail server also. Great combination – VPS + Plesk.

11 Things You Can do to Improve Your Website SEO Ranking

In my article 11 Things You Can do to Improve Your Website SEO Ranking I share some advice from my experience. I reveal some of the secret sauce of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Learning the basics of how to SEO your blog will go a long way. You do not need to become a world class SEO, the whole point is to learn enough SEO so you get some decent traction within your chosen niche.

Backup Your Blog Daily

I like using Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3 storage for my backups. AWS provides a well documented PHP Software Developer’s kit (SDK). Develop a AWS PHP SDK backup script and setup a cron job to run it daily. A Linux cron job is a way to schedule a task on the Linux server. Configure a cron to run your backup script on a daily basis and save your backups for at least 90 days. Don’t forget to test your backups regularly to ensure they are working as expected.

Backing up your blog is important. Consider this. Suppose you spend 10 to 15 hours setting up your blog and then over the course of a year you write 50 articles. If you spend 3 hours per article that comes out to 160 hours of work you have put into your blog. That is a man month. Protect your investment – backup daily.

Blog Regularly

You can probably start your blog on a weekend and write 4 basic articles or pages in that amount of time. Cool, that gets you started. Then you should write an article on a regular basis. I would recommend being consistent. Write an article or two every week. And do not forget to stay focused on your niche when doing so. Make a plan and work your plan.

Stay Away From Politics

Politics in the country is out of control. We are at the brink. Side step those political issues. Stay neutral. If you are going to write about something that could become politically charged, just report the facts and do so in a way that does not reflect any bias.

Conclusion

We covered a lot of ground. There is a lot to know and do to create a successful blog. I’ve given you the advice I would give myself. This advice comes for my years as a blogger and one who has had his successes and failures with SEO and blogging. We covered why you should blog, the benefits, how to Seo your blog and which blog hosting to use and many other aspects of blogging for the PHP Programmer.

Is attending a coding boot camp worth the time, effort and money? In this article I will try to answer these questions and I will give you my opinion. I will cover what skills you need develop to become a PHP Programmer. You can acquire these skills in many ways. I will talk about self study, junior college, the university, and coding boot camps. Each has it’s merits and it’s drawbacks.

Time and Cost

Coding boot camps can take 8 to 24 weeks depending on the institution and the number of classroon hours. They range from full-time immersion to part-time. The cost starts at $8000 and goes up from there. And you will spend at least 600 hours in the classroom and out of class studying, working on projects, and doing some hands-on.

Can one really learn enough in 8 weeks or 600 hours to become a PHP programmer? I think it is possible if one either has great aptitude or prior programming experience. Prior experience does not necessarily need to come from being employed. What it means is that maybe one has been teaching oneself how to program and has some exposure.

Last 40 Years of Programming

Matt Roloff, from the movie series Little People Big World wrote in his book that in the 80’s companies would send developer trainees to private training courses that was weeks long.

During the late 80’s I met a man who told me he majored in mathematics so he could become a programmer. He said studying math was the only way he could get access to the university’s computer to learn how to program.

In the 80’s the local community college and universities started offering majors in Management Information Systems (MIS) and Computer Science (CS).

The interesting thing is that the MIS degree only requires 21 units out of about 125 in the core area of ones major.

In the very beginning people were self taught at the university. These were the investors. Then came the corporate sponsored training of 2 or 3 weeks to maybe 6 weeks. After that the industry required a Bachelor’s degree.

Today one can gain entrance in many different ways – self study, junior college, the university, and coding boot camps.

You Must be Self Directed and Motivated

When I go into retail businesses, the sub shop, the bank, etc, I like to ask the young people what their goals are. I’ve heard the gambit. From becoming a cop to becoming a game developer, to the University is too expensive and not worth it. The later is some great insight.

The second question I ask is something along the lines of what have they done to know this course of action is for them and what what have they have done to further their goals.

Lets take these two as an example. The guy who said he wanted to become a police officer what about 20 years old. When asked if he had gone on any ride along he said no. He has a dream with no game plan. Several years later he was still working a the same retail outlet.

The guy who said he wanted to create computer games and was waiting for school when I asked him if he was learning to create computer games. I went on to ask him if he knew anything about Linux and he said he has not heard of Linux.

The person who is going to make it is self directed, motivated, and takes the bull by the horns.

As an employer I want to hear about how someone learned by researching and doing. You need to show some initiative that shows me you really want to do what it is we are talking about and it shows you have passion.

What I recommend You Learn to Become a PHP Programmer

You can learn all you need to know online.

Linux – is the backbone of all of this. Linux is the hosting server operating system. You only need to know a handful of things to get started. You will need to be able to load Linux on a spare piece of hardware such as a laptop or and old desktop. You will not need a lot of power. I use an old Del laptop that has an i3, 4G of RAM and Solid State Devices in place of the old spinning hard drive. You need to be able to add a user. Ensure you have Apache or NGINX, MySql or one of it’s clones, and PHP installed. You may need to be able to modify the php.ini files to configure PHP.

Apache / NGINX – Add a virtual host and possibly being able to configure mod_rewrite.

MySql and Structured Query Language (SQL) – you will need to add a database, table, add a root user, and a regular user. SQL is used to create, read, update, delete and list records.

PHP – is the whole reason we are here. PHP is not a difficult language to learn. There is a number of training courses online. Basically you will need to know what variables are, their scope, how to create a function, create a classes, work with strings, understand looks, and work with arrays.

Database Normalization – This is very important. This is a must have skill. Without it you will struggle when building applications from scratch or even when modifying existing applications. Basically what database normalization is breaking the data down into the minimum data that should be stored in that table.

Lets take an invoice as example. We could make one huge tale that contained all the billing, shipping, account information and all the totals in one file along with the products or services paid for.

This is a great example because if you use one table you will store a lot of redundant data in each table. The solution? Two tables. One for the invoice header that contains the things we need to store only once like the billing and shipping information. The we create a second table that contains only the product information. This arrangement is cleaner and will store less data.

Project Management Skills – You may not need project management skills to get started, however I added this will help you will your projects.

HTML5 – HTML5 is the latest HTML standard. W3Schools [https://www.w3schools.com/html/html5_intro.asp] has a great tutorial on HTML5

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) – While you are not a designer you will work with someone’s design so you will need to know the basics.  I recommend you take this course on CSS.

JavaScript – JavaScript runs in the browser while PHP runs on the server. I recommend you take this course on JavaScript.

AJAX – will give you a lot of power and make your user experience better. A mustr know and fun part of web development. I recommend taking this course. [https://www.udemy.com/jquery-tutorial/]

Networking – when installing Linux sometimes it is important to know now to configure your network connect because it does not get configured correctly during the install process.

IP Assignment and Routing – Based on your server configuration it may get an assigned IP or a static IP. Static is the only way to go when configuring a server. You need to know about Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP). You do not want want to configure your server using DHCP, you want a static IP that way your server is always using the same IP.

Application Development Analysis and Design – Probably not something the average entry level PHP programmer needs to know. I put it here because it can be a useful thing to learn and know as an entry level PHP Programmer.

Object Oriented PHP Programming –

Procedural PHP Programming – Some say that Procedural programming is making a comeback. I don’t see it. Object Oriented Programming is so much better than procedural programming. You should know both.

Name Space –

Dependency Injection –

Autoload –

Security – sanitizing form data is a must have skill. There are other security issues as well. For instance not allowing access to an empty directly by your visitors. Then there is preventing unauthorized access to your PHP programs.

All of these tools are open source and free.

You can build enormous web apps by knowing just the following:

Life long learning …. PHP was not around until 1994 yet a vast majority of the web has been built on PHP and MySql. Relatic=vely new technologies.

And in reality the Internet was born January of 2000, after all the Y2K projects were complete.

Future of Programming

Currently there is two classes of developers. Programmers and engineers. In colleges there is two tracts. One is for the programmer. The other is for the computer scientist. The programmer learns to program while the computer scientist learned much more. The computer scientist will get exposure to creating parser, drivers, interpreters, and compilers. The computer science curriculum is much more robust.

Today we read about and maybe even see self driving cars, semi trucks, and robots. This is just the tip of the iceberg so to speak. In the near future we will begin to see computers applications that create computer programs. My friend David Connelly from the UK says he wrote a program that creates the administrative interface based on the information he programs into his software generator. Within seconds he is able to create ??? that would take him days to create.

This is what we are going to see in the near future – I’d say withing 5 years if not 10.

Computer Scientists are the ones who will be doing this type of work that will displace the programmer. I’m a programmer. If I had it all over to do again, I’d become a computer engineer. The curriculum is much more difficult, however computer engineers get to do some really cool stuff like create reality rides for Disneyland. Like this one

The seat moves giving the sensation that you are really flying and moving.

It is my opinion self driving cars and self driving semi trucks will be the norm within 10 years and the people who are driving taxicabs and the semi trucks will be displaced. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. They say most jobs will be replaced by robots in about 10 years. The person making robots will be the computer scientist.

Conclusion

Boot camp graduates are so prevalent they are becoming a commodity. One must do something to make themselves stand out. Open Source projects. Writing an application and publishing it on ???? Put up a blog. Use WordPress and a decent host and start blogging. You are selling yourself.

The University of Arizona (UofA) is offering a coding boot camp that odes not include PHP so I would not suggest you attend, I however can use it as an example. The cost is $9500 and can be taken for 24 weeks which is part-time, or full-time which will take 12 weeks. The UofA recommends 20 to 30 hours of study outside of class. Part-time is 10 hours of class time, while full-time is 20 hours of in class time.

Handful of well paid engineers will replace a ton of minimum wage workers.

This article gives some guidance on how to become a PHP / MySql developer and what you will need to know. I assume you have some programming and database familiarity because we will start at that level.

You will need a simple development and testing environment. I go over that in this article. I give a laundry list of things you should know and things you should do in your quest to become a PHP Programmer.

How I Started Learning PHP

I was a programmer before I taught myself how to program in PHP. To me it all comes down to data driven browser based applications. The starting point was simple. For me it was CRUD plus listing records. CRUD is an acronym that stands for Create, Read, Update, and Delete.

I hard coded each part following the following steps:

1. Create a PHP file.
2. Created a database and table in MySql (or one of it’s clones).
3. Add a database connection string using PHP
4. Hard coded the code to create, read, update, and delete record using database table I created.
5. Hard coded the code that lists the records in the table.
6. The above creates on simple PHP program file.

That’s it. That is how it all started for me.

Create a PHP Development Environment

You will need a development environment. Either a simple VPS some place like Digital Ocean [link] or PixeGate.net [link] or you can use an old laptop or desktop. I have several test environments. I have a local hardware server (old Dell desktop computer) and an old laptop. Both have their spinning drive replaced with a Solid State Device (SSD) so they are better optimized having the hard drive bottleneck removed. Your garden variety i3 laptop with and SSD and 4G of RAM should serve you well.

One thing to note is you will want your development and testing servers have the same specifications as your production server. Since this is for learning and your code will not be moved to a production environment, this is not an issue.

Skills You Will Need to Develop

Linux – There is a lot to know about Linux and I do not think most will expect you to be master Linux admin while you are at the beginner stage. You should be able to install Linux and be able to create a user.

Networking – You should know how to modify a Linux network connect if need be, and plug in a network cable as needed. You need to know the difference between a static IP address and a leased IP Address (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)).
Apache and / or NGINX – Basically you need to know how to create or modify a virtual host, and stop and start the webserver.

MySql or One of it’s Clones – You will need to know how to create a database, create a table, create indexes, and create query strings that can perform basic CRUD plus list.

Basic PHP – You will need to know the following:

• How open tags work and why and when a closing tag is not required
• Variables and Types
• Data Types
• Capturing Form Data, processing it and sanitizing it
• For Loops and While Loops
• How a Switch Works
• Arrays
• Creating and Accessing String
• Searching and Replacing a String within a String
• Formatting Strings
• Call by Value and Call by Reference
• Reading and Writing to Text Files
• Basic Understanding of Object Oriented Programming
• Procedural Programming
• How to Configure PHP via the php.ini file

HTML5 – W3Schools has a great HTML5 tutorial that would be good to go through as part of your PHP programmer training. [link : https://www.w3schools.com/html/]

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) – There is a lot to know about CSS. Basically it is the “language” that describes how a web page will be rendered. W3Sschools [link] has a great tutorial on this.

Mobile Responsive – You may not need to know much about making a website mobile responsive, however you do need to understand what it is. Basically it is using CSS to make a web page render in a desktop, a tablet, and a smart phone is such a way that is looks correct for that size of screen.

JavaScript – The first thing to understand is JavaScript runs in the browser, while PHP runs on the server. There is a lot to know about JavaScript. If you write raw JavaScript it may not work in all browsers. Each browser has it’s own JavaScript engine and they differ.

JavaScript library – jQuery is my favorite JavaScript library. It standardizes your JavaScript so that it runs in all browsers.

AJAX – AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. Sounds ominous, and at first maybe it is. Once you get started AJAX can be quite fun. AJAX gives the PHP programmer the ability to create interactive web pages. That means the wold page does not need to be refreshed with every change the customer makes. AJAX will update just the block that needs to be updated making for a better user experience. Way back in the old days web pages were not interactive.

Conclusion

We covered a lot of ground. Becoming a PHP programmer requires a lot of work to develop the skills and knowledge you will need. It is possible to learn all this and some if one takes the time to work through the list while doing some hands on.

This article covers system analysis and design from the PHP developer’s perspective. Not only should programmers be aware of system analysis and design, site owners should be aware of this as well. If a developer fails to perform an adequate system analysis and design they are setting themselves up for working harder and longer than they should have. The other part is this phase will produce a written outline of the project that can be used to communicate with the customer. The customer needs to be aware of this phase as well. I cannot state strongly enough how important this phase is.

Introduction to System Analysis and Design

System analysis and design is taught at most junior colleges and universities as part of their programming or computer science curriculum. But what is system analysis and design? In a nutshell is is formalizing the project. Taking what a customer has told the programming staff about what they want. When complete it is a road map to the finished computer application. In this article we will look at this from the perspective of the PHP programmer.

The System Analysis and Design

When it comes to the garden variety (small) PHP programming project there does not seem to be a lot of time to allot to the system analysis and design phase of the project. Usually the system analysis and design occurs in the programmer’s head. I understand this approach because there is usually limited resources when it comes to PHP freelance programming projects. In reality the PHP programmer should take some amount of time for a formal analysis and design.

For a small project the analysis and design phase will take an hour or less to compete. For larger projects this phase my take longer.

Doing a formal analysis and deign can save the developer time and energy. And it will allow the programmer to get early feedback to ensure that project is what they customer envisioned. In school they teach this phase will save the developer a lot of time and energy. From my experience this is true. I’ve hastily began projects believing I had it all figured out and took little time analyzing the project or formalizing it. Those times I skipped the analysis and design caused me to work harder and longer. It is very important to do a formal analysis and design before starting to program.

What Does a Finished Analysis and Design look like?

Each project will vary. Some will be maintenance or bug fixes that require thinking about the issue, doing some research and coming up with a course of action. Other projects, manly those where a project is built from scratch will require the following:

• Project Statement – The reason for the project, the goals for the project, the why, and the delivery date.
  Site Hierarchy – Outline the menus, pages, and forms.
• Form Templates – Making form templates and having them reviewed before stating to code will save time and effort and may flesh out potential misunderstandings.
• Hosting Requirements – May need to be documented as well depending on the resources that may be need to be provided for the final web application.
• Database Normalization – This is a big one. Database normalization is a skill all PHP developers should posses. The database is at the heart of the project. If done correctly it will make the project easier and will make future changes easier. And will reduce the amount of rework.
• Reports – Outlining which reports are needed and what each report will require will help in understanding the project. Defining the reports that are needed will also help with understanding what data needs to be stored and in what format.
• Security Issues and Concerns – The Internet has become a war zone. On a regular basis we hear or worse yet are invovled in a data breach. I do not think there is anyone in America that has not been effected. They say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Be security conscious.

Conclusion

As you can see the system analysis and design is an invaluable tool to formalize the project so the programmer can verify with the customer that he or she is on the right track. This phase can also reduce the amount of time and effort that goes into a project. This is a mandatory part of all projects. The customer should request a system analysis and design occur and every programmer should do this automatically. Neglecting to do a formal system analysis and design could cause a project to go off the rails creating a failure. Performing this task will lead to better, easier, and more successful projects.