PHP For Web Development by Codemy

About this course

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.