What's new in this version of the course

- Let's take a look at what's new in this course. It's been completely revised since the original version was incorporated into the Lynda.com online training library. The original version was based on PHP 5.3 which is no longer officially supported. PHP 7, a major new version of PHP, was released at the end of 2015 so the course has been updated to take PHP 7 into account. But all of the techniques in this course are backwards compatible with PHP 5.4 which at the time of this recording was still being used on nearly a third of all PHP servers.

Although some code will work only in PHP 7, I always show you an alternative for older versions of PHP. This version of the course no longer covers installing Apache, PHP and MySQL because David Gassner's course of the same name goes into that subject in far greater depth and is constantly kept up-to-date. However, the basic structure of this course remains unchanged so you can easily pick up this version if you are halfway through the original one.

In addition to bringing the course up-to-date with PHP 7, I've made some improvements. I've removed the discussion of "magic quotes" because they're no longer part of PHP. I've also used the simpler array syntax that was introduced in PHP 5.4. In response to feedback from members, I've clarified the explanation of several features such as the increment operator. There's also a whole new chapter on interpreting PHP error messages.

But perhaps the biggest change is the introduction of challenges and solutions. Most chapters now end with a short practical exercise that challenges you to think how to use the techniques in the previous videos to solve a problem. The idea is to get you to start thinking like a programmer rather than simply copying and pasting code. Most challenges take only a few minutes then I show you how I solve the problem. Well, I hope I've whetted your appetite and you're now ready to dive into PHP.