Entry strategy, freelance development path. Where to start to become a coder and php programmer?

Question

Freelance

As I understand it, the most popular and demanded "professions" in freelancing are layout and php-programmers on different frameworks. I have minimal knowledge in layout (the maximum of technologies is bootstrap, base on html and css), I don't know php at all. Where to start your start in order to start studying global layout and backend (php, frameworks). Maybe you can recommend some better video courses, books on this. And what does a php programmer need to know in order to work as a freelancer?
I understand that this question is very abstract and shows my illiteracy, but still...

Answer 1

Html and css with practical tasks are best studied at htmlacademy.ru . After you get used to it, you download free psd layouts and typeset, with an adaptive, some complex things that you can’t make up, you leave for now.
Then you look for a video where they make up the layout, usually in the first seconds or minutes they show the layout and you can immediately understand whether you can make it up yourself or not, if you understand that you can’t, then you watch how the author does it, you learn something new for yourself.
By php. It is pointless to read large and thick books so far, everything read will fly out of your head. You put OpenServer, and immediately into battle:
1. Variables, conditions, cycles, arrays.
2. Custom functions
3. Basic functions for working with strings and arrays. Combination of functions. (it is important to understand and remember what they can do).
4. Post and Get requests, receiving Post and Get requests from the form (here you can immediately pull up html according to the forms)
5. Databases, simple queries to the database, selections, writing to the database from the form.
6. Cookies, sessions.
7. Reading and writing to files.
8. Regular expressions.
9. OOP, basic concepts. The most difficult and incomprehensible for a beginner. It is not clear because it is not clear why this is needed and why it further simplifies the work, so somehow everything flies by the ears.
If English is good, then codecademy.com .
If it’s bad, then the basic theory (and immediately practice) should be done here .
Further, it is better to immediately switch to the framework (preferably Laravel). MVC in theory is also poorly understood because it is difficult to convey the benefits to beginners, and when working with frameworks, you yourself understand why it is convenient.
While studying the framework and OOP, you will pull it up.
The most important thing, in my learning experience, is to immediately do practical tasks in the course of studying topics, gradually, to fill your hand. It’s better not to skip tasks (with the thought “yes, it’s easy here, in theory I know how to do it, I’ll skip it, I wonder what will happen next”).
The most wrong thing is to read almost as far as OOP, and when you open the code editor, you understand that you cannot write simple conditions or iterate over an array.
That is, less reading, more practice. It's about naked PHP.
About the framework, if English allows itLaracasts: Laravel 5.4 from scratch . If it doesn’t allow, then you search YouTube for something like “a simple blog on Laravel”, watch and code in parallel at home.
It’s the same here, it’s useless to watch the entire series of videos from the beginning to the created blog with the admin panel under popcorn. It turns out later that you can’t even do basic things. You need to do it in parallel with the author, he does some kind of functionality, you look, you do the same, initially it may not be clear much and why the author is doing this, but over time you will understand how it works.
Then you try to do something of your own, some "features", for example, authorization using social networks. networks, likes to posts and comments (with the help of ajax, here you can learn jQuery a little bit), nesting of comments, etc. You can come up with another project for yourself (imagine yourself as a startup).
Then you can study system administration a little bit, buy an inexpensive VPS, install Nginx, MySQL, PHP-FPM, etc. You try to upload your project there, so that everything works. Then you can try to fasten some search engine (Sphinx, for example). Learning the command line is also on codeacedemy.com .
Perhaps this is not particularly necessary for freelancing, but when applying for a job (including remote work), it will not be superfluous, in many vacancies this is required even from Juniors (but they like to exaggerate in vacancies).
I've been researching this myself recently. Before that, there was Python + Django (the first framework). Never worked on a team. So it can be said that I pass on experience from a beginner to a beginner.

Answer 2

The solution is obviously you go to the freelance exchange and look at job descriptions.

Answer 3

it will be difficult to roll into the underfull stack like this, since you have layout skills and if you want to learn php, then focus on it - you will be a good back. Or study js and continue to download the layout and you will be a good front. And when you become one of them, you can already develop related technology and even then become a good full -stack
Courses - htmlacademy, pluralsight

Answer 4

1001 questions on the topic: how do I teach and what ...
You teach. While you are asking questions - what to read? Someone is reading. Tomorrow you will come and ask a question - you took the project, but how to do it? Or: how to find your first order? You don't ask questions that have been asked before you. Learn to search for information and soak it all up yourself))

Answer 5

"PHP 7 in original" reads well