5 Best Online PHP Courses and Tutorials to Learn PHP in 2022

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PHP is an open-source back-end scripting language used for creating dynamic and interactive web pages and applications. It is one of the oldest and most widely-used programming languages for web development, with around 80% of all websites running on PHP, including major platforms like Facebook, WordPress, Upwork, and Spotify.

Though highly technical in nature, with a bit of online guidance and dedication, PHP skills can be acquired in no time. Many online sources can help you become fluent in PHP, whether you are a total beginner or want to advance your PHP skills. 

Online tutorials can be an excellent learning tool. Choosing the best to learn PHP can be the first step toward this profitable career. Here is our choice of top five tutorials that will help you to learn PHP more effectively and become a better PHP developer.

Before we move on to the list of the best tutorials, let’s first clarify why you should learn PHP in 2022.

Why Learn PHP?

Even though its popularity has declined over the years, PHP is still extensively used in web development. Efficient, flexible, simple, and easy to learn, you can create anything from a simple website to a complex web application with PHP. It’s free and open-source, supports most web browsers, and has many additional tools to assist it. Additionally, it has a large and active community of developers to learn and get help for your web development projects. 

And since there are still millions of sites built using PHP, PHP developers are always in demand, and there are many job opportunities available, both in freelancing and full-time jobs. 

1. Learn PHP by Codecademy

Learn PHP is a free 25-hour course that will teach you the fundamental programming concepts of PHP through interactive exercises, quizzes, articles, and freeform projects. This course covers everything from PHP variables and functions to PHP arrays, form validation using HTML forms, conditionals, logic, and loops, as well as more advanced lessons like classes and objects in PHP. It is suitable for beginners, though some basic HTML knowledge will be helpful before taking the course. Taking Learn PHP is an excellent opportunity for those who prefer getting directly into the code because it teaches you by actively doing coding exercises rather than just video or text tutorials. 

2. PHP for Beginners – Become a PHP Master – CMS Project by Udemy

PHP for Beginners is a great course that will take you from scratch to PHP mastery and teach you real-world PHP skills. With over 70,000 enrolled students, this is one of the most popular beginner-level PHP courses on Udemy. It’s also one of the most comprehensive PHP courses on the platform, with 38 hours of video lectures that teach you almost everything you need to know about PHP. 

PHP for Beginners is taught by an experienced engineer and mainly focuses on practical lessons instead of theory and covers various topics such as code editors and PHP basics, PHP data types, control structures, and functions. You will also learn how to create a Content Management System (CMS) and use MySQL and Object-Oriented Programming. 

Note that this course puts a lot of emphasis on using PHP in the context of CMS, so If you don’t intend to use CMS in your work, maybe this is not the right course for you. Otherwise, this is a perfect course to start learning PHP in 2022. 

3. Building Web Applications in PHP by Coursera

This PHP course by the University of Michigan on Coursera is aimed at intermediate-level students with some previous knowledge of PHP. It is instructed by Dr. Charles R. Severance, a Clinical Professor, and has very positive reviews and ratings. You can freely examine the course content, but to get full access, you need to subscribe. 

It is an excellent course for those who are interested not only in PHP but in web development as a whole. In addition to PHP, it teaches basic lessons in HTML and CSS. You will also learn the basic structure of a web app, request and response cycles, PHP syntax and data structures, and how a web browser interacts with a web server. The course also covers PHP arrays, functions, error handling, and superglobal variables. 

This course is a good mix of theoretical and practical assignments, and you’ll get weekly practical assignments.

4. Laravel PHP Framework Tutorial by FreeCodeCamp

Laravel is an open-source, back-end PHP-based framework for creating simple to complex web applications. It is free and easy to use and is one of the most popular PHP frameworks nowadays, used by thousands of developers.

Laravel PHP Framework Tutorial is a great tutorial for beginners who want to develop both PHP and Laravel skills. It was created by freeCodeCamp.org, a nonprofit organization helping people learn to code for free, and is instructed by Victor Gonzalez. You can find it on YouTube. 

During the 4.5 hours-long video tutorial, you will have an intro about Laravel and lessons on getting started with PHP coding. Then you will move on to an in-depth explanation of how to build an Instagram clone from scratch with all its built-in functionalities. The best thing about this tutorial is that you learn from a real-world project.  

Keep in mind that this tutorial can have some outdated info because it is based on Laravel 5.8. But you can quickly fix this if you go to the comment section, get help from the community members, and use Laravel 8.0 while completing the course. 

5. Object-Oriented PHP Learning by Eduonix

Eduonix Learning Solutions is an online learning and training platform and a Udemy instructor. Among many other topics, it offers online web development courses, one of which is Object-Oriented PHP Learning. This course is aimed at intermediate students with some basic knowledge of PHP. It is a great choice to get the fundamentals of both PHP and object-oriented programming and learn to build a website using both. 

Although relatively short, only 4.5 hours, this course includes understanding the concepts behind object-oriented PHP, building a complete website using classes and objects in PHP, learning about abstraction and Inheritance, and learning how to deal with RDBMS within the OOPS framework.

After finishing the course, you will get a certification of completion and free full lifetime access to all the course resources.

Summary

These tutorials offer a good starting point if you are new to the PHP world. If you are an intermediate-level PHP developer, you can use these tutorials to develop your skills further and stay ahead of the rest. 

Many great PHP courses and tutorials are available for coders of all experience levels, so choose those that best suit your needs and learning style. Just remember, learning doesn’t stop once you finish the tutorial. The best way to learn PHP is to use your skills and build something on your own. Web development technologies constantly evolve, and there’s always more to master. Never stop learning and exploring. 

Put your skills into practice at Cosmic Development.

If you are looking for a place to put your PHP knowledge into practice and work with the newest technology in the field, visit Cosmic Development’s career page. We offer free courses and training programs for our employees and a fun and stimulating work environment. Currently, we have a job opening for a Senior Software Engineer with 5+ years of experience with object-oriented PHP. Go ahead and apply.