Getting started writing a PHP web application

[traineeirishprogrammer]

I am at this stage an intermediate programmer at php. Well I am to some extent. See I know a good amount of theory behind php but I never put it into practicality. I never really made a useful working web application.

I have tried ever so hard to at least get some sort of web application to work but I always get stuck half way into it, ending up wipeing all the work I have just done and starting from scratch.

As I said I know all the theory behind it. I know functions, classes, SESSIONS, variables, and databases. I need to know how you all begin to write web applications. Where do you start and how do you plan your applications. I simply get stuck too easily and I am getting nowhere. It is so frustrating. I want to be able to write guest books, cms systems, login and register scripts, advert scripts and so on.

Can you please help me!!!!

Thanks
Brendan.

[Atli]

Hi, Brendan.

What most programmers do wrong when building applications is that they just sit down and start typing, without having any plan. This, of course, will end up getting them stuck half way through when the core of their application is no longer able to support it. Many people try to keep plowing on, throwing in fixes and patches at random, but that will only make the code ugly and unmanageable.

Think of it as building a house. You just don't pick up a hammer and start hammering. You need a plan, a blueprint.
This is what you need to do first, design your application so that it wont implode half way through.

Try to keep your code in functions or, preferably, classes. It is awful to have to read code that is all over the place and mixed up with the HTML. It's just doomed to fail.

What I'm trying to say is, plan ahead! Design! Know what your writing before you write it.

[pbmods]

Changed thread title to better describe the problem (did you know that threads whose titles contain phrases such as, 'I need guidance' actually get FEWER responses?).

[traineeirishprogrammer]

thank you very much.

[traineeirishprogrammer]

Ok then thanks for that. But could you go a little deeper into your planning process. I do realise that planning is the key to sucess. As they say failing to plan is like planning to fail.

So lets say you were planning a project such as a Content Management System or a Guest Book; what would you do.

How would you go about planning program flow for example!!!

Thanks
Brendan