Free Course Image PHP For Web Development

Free online coursePHP For Web Development

Duration of the online course: 2 hours and 33 minutes

New

Build dynamic websites with PHP in this free online course—set up XAMPP, use GitHub, deploy to Heroku, and earn practical web development skills.

In this free course, learn about

  • What PHP is used for in web development and why it remains widely used
  • How to set up local PHP development with XAMPP and required components
  • How to set up a cloud PHP dev environment and use Git/GitHub for version control
  • How to deploy a PHP app to Heroku and which file marks the app as PHP
  • Basic PHP file structure: PHP tags in HTML and outputting text with echo
  • Variables, string concatenation (.), and core math ops including modulus (%)
  • Comparison operators, escaping quotes in strings, and common escape characters
  • Control flow with if/else and elseif, including what else blocks are for
  • Working with arrays and indexes, including selecting random elements safely
  • Looping with for/while and tracing loop output results
  • Defining functions and passing arguments to your own PHP functions
  • Using built-ins: rand(), date('Y'), string functions like ucwords()
  • Reusing code with include() and require_once() for shared variables and templates
  • PHP templating patterns: shared navbar/includes and renaming index.html to index.php

Course Description

Turn static pages into dynamic, data-driven websites by learning PHP the way web developers actually use it. This course is designed for beginners who want to understand how PHP powers real web applications, while also building a workflow that feels modern and job-ready. You will start with the fundamentals and quickly connect them to practical tasks like running a local development server, writing clean PHP inside HTML templates, and organizing code so projects stay easy to update as they grow.

You will set up a local environment with XAMPP to run PHP on your computer and practice with confidence. From there, you will explore the basic structure of a PHP file and the essential building blocks that make pages interactive: outputting content, working with variables, using math and comparison operators, and writing clear conditional logic. Along the way, you will develop the ability to read and write everyday PHP expressions and understand why your code behaves the way it does.

As your skills expand, you will work with arrays, loops, and functions to make your code more reusable and efficient. You will also practice handling strings, including common formatting techniques and safe use of escape characters when working with text and embedded quotation marks. These are the small details that separate code that merely runs from code that is reliable and easy to maintain.

To reflect how professional developers build and ship web projects, the course introduces a practical version-control workflow using Git and GitHub. You will learn how to track changes, collaborate, and maintain a clear project history, which is especially important when you begin iterating on templates and shared components across multiple pages.

Finally, you will bring everything together by learning simple PHP templating techniques, including reusable includes for shared elements like navigation bars and centralized variables for consistent site-wide settings. You will also deploy your work to the cloud using Heroku so your PHP site can be viewed and tested outside your local machine. By the end, you will have a strong foundation in PHP for web development and the confidence to keep building real-world projects with a clean, repeatable workflow.

Course content

  • Video class: Intro To PHP Programming For Web Development 02m
  • Exercise: Why does PHP remain widely used for web development?
  • Video class: Install XAMPP to Start Coding PHP 05m
  • Exercise: Which components are required to run a basic PHP site locally with XAMPP
  • Video class: Setting Up Your PHP Cloud Development Environment 08m
  • Exercise: Which line correctly outputs text in a PHP file?
  • Video class: PHP Version Control Using Git and Github in the Cloud 13m
  • Exercise: Which command sequence stages, commits, and pushes your PHP project changes to GitHub?
  • Video class: Deploying Your PHP Code To Heroku 08m
  • Exercise: Which file signals to Heroku that your app is a PHP application for deployment?
  • Video class: Understanding Basic PHP Structure 08m
  • Exercise: Identify the correct PHP tags used to embed PHP in an HTML page
  • Video class: How To Use Variables In PHP 07m
  • Exercise: In PHP, which operator concatenates two strings?
  • Video class: Using Math Operators In PHP 04m
  • Exercise: In PHP arithmetic, which operator returns the remainder of a division for example $a = 41 and $b = 4 producing 1?
  • Video class: How To Use Comparison Operators in PHP 03m
  • Exercise: Which operator should you use to check if two PHP variables have the same value?
  • Video class: How To Use Escape Characters in PHP 04m
  • Exercise: In PHP strings, which character is used to escape embedded quotation marks so the string is not terminated?
  • Video class: How To Use If/Else Statements In PHP 07m
  • Exercise: Purpose of the else block in PHP if else control structures
  • Video class: How To use If/ElseIf Statements in PHP 03m
  • Exercise: What is the purpose of else if in a PHP conditional chain?
  • Video class: How to Use Arrays in PHP 10m
  • Exercise: In PHP numeric arrays, given $colors = array(blue, red, green, purple), which index returns green when accessed with $colors[index]?
  • Video class: How To Use For Loops and While Loops In PHP 12m
  • Exercise: In PHP, what is the last value output by this loop: $a = 1; while ($a < 10) { echo $a; $a++; }
  • Video class: How To Use Functions In PHP 06m
  • Exercise: How do you pass an argument to a PHP function you created?
  • Video class: Creating Random Numbers in PHP With the rand() function 06m
  • Exercise: What is the highest valid index for a PHP array with 5 elements when using rand to pick a random item?
  • Video class: Using the Date in PHP with the date() Function 05m
  • Exercise: In PHP date(), what does uppercase Y return?
  • Video class: String Manipulation in PHP 07m
  • Exercise: Which PHP function capitalizes the first letter of every word in a string?
  • Video class: Using the Include() Function in PHP 08m
  • Exercise: Why include a single variables file across multiple PHP pages?
  • Video class: Templating Out A Website With PHP 10m
  • Exercise: Why rename index.html to index.php when integrating PHP into a template?
  • Video class: Templating A Webpage Using require_once() In PHP 08m
  • Exercise: How should you include a reusable navbar in PHP templates to keep pages consistent and easy to update

This free course includes:

2 hours and 33 minutes of online video course

Digital certificate of course completion (Free)

Exercises to train your knowledge

100% free, from content to certificate

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