An idea for the community here
 

What would you guys think about a community written tutorial? We could first discuss everything that needs to be covered, which order it should be taught and then anyone who fills up to it can write a section or two. Really everyone could help. Lets say you don't feel comfortable writing a section on how functions work, come up with a couple of exercises for functions instead.

I know that there are all kinds of reasons why this wouldn't work but I think it would be a lot of fun. It would probably be best to decide on coding standards, naming conventions .. all that good stuff before hand. I think it would be hard for people to learn if every section of the tutorial had code that was written in a different style.

Imagine how cool it would be if you were learning PHP and came to a forum like this and saw that a lot of the members came together and built a nice tutorial that you could use to learn with. I dunno, maybe it's a dumb idea. I think it would be nifty though.

Hmm i like the idea, but we already had an idea to create some software with all members and that died a early death.

Besides, how many tutorials are there already? :P

the idea is nice, we could do like a php e-book tutorial :)

A nice enough idea, definitely. However, at this stage don't sweat the details: just get something moving along. It is not important if different contributors post slightly different indentation depths, brace positions or naming conventions those can be tidied up very quickly during a later editing process.

I think it would be a lot easier to do this then the coding project that Jim mentioned. True, there are a lot of tutorials out there already but so what? There are probably enough free snippets of php code out there that you don't have to write any of your own code either. It's something else that the community could work on together over time. And to be honest, most of the free tutorials I've come across really aren't very good.

I'm still learning so I'll probably only be able to help with the real simple stuff but I would still like to try it. If you guys are interested I'll sit down and try to figure out a decent starting point. I'll try to come up with what we want to teach and the order we want to do it in. I picture it in my head being set up like a wiki so it's easy to edit and for everyone to contribute what they can.

A very interesting idea. As a community, we could (over time) write one of the most extensive PHP tutorials out there. To be honest, we probaly can't top sites like tizag.com with our tutorials, but there is still more we can do. To set us apart, we should move on to concepts and applications after we teach the language. This provides a far more comprehensive approach than most sites have.

From my experience as the project team leader, I would strongly advise whoever heads this off NOT to vote on standards but to decide for themselves and present it as is. This was one of the largest roadblocks to starting our failed project, although it was really a small issue.

To get this done well, we need writers, proofreaders and editors. The writers are anyone and everyone that wants to help, so long as they know what they are talking about. The proofreader is someone else who knows the subject, they make sure everything is accurate. Finally, the editor fixes grammatical errors and makes it look more readable. Unfortunately it is somewhat uncommon to find a tech who has good English skills, so we may have to go without.

Here is something like what we would want our outline to look like:

• Basic PHP
  • Variables
  • Functions,
  • ect..
• Intermediate PHP
  • Database interaction
  • Classes
  • ect..
• Advanced Concepts
  • Data authentication
  • Object oriented design (this is a really hard one to teach)
  • Program design (multi-tiered architecture, ect)
  • Language extensions
  • ect..

The advanced conepets would really set us apart if we could do them well. While mos exist somehwere, they are scattered apart over various sites. If we have many advanced tutorials in one place, it would probably bring in traffic.

I be glad to help out in anyway.

-Cf

Like VI said,

I think the only way this would be worth it is if we can offer more than just tutorials. If the project can keep moving forward and not just teach the basics.

Organization is also key.

In the advanced topics I would suggest not spending so much time on the logic behind something. Such as we all know what a linked list is so don't go into overkill and talk about what a linked list is, how it works, blah blah, but go into how to write it in php.

Might even recommend this for the earlier sections but then im not sure what else you would write. Maybe just more examples that show the usage of the topics.

Giving tips, advice, and examples is what will set this apart from other tutorials. Since it is community driven, make it so that its more of a guideline and less of a tutorial. Not just steps to create something but steps with advice and tips from other programmers as well. I always hate seeing tutorials that are written by someone who thinks they know all, and saying that this is the 1 way to do it.. I think that came out right.

Wow, there is already a lot more interest in this then I expected. I like all of the ideas you guys are throwing out. I agree that we should go beyond the basics. Also, one thing a lot of tutorials seem to be missing are decent examples and exercises. I think if we could have a couple of interesting exercises for each section it would really help people grasp what is going on.

This site does have a lot of nice articles that relate to advanced topics but I think having some things directly in the tutorial would be very helpful. I agree with CoryMathews that advice from several people on any given topic would be nice. It would be great to be able to see two or three different ways to accomplish the same goal.

To those of you who have looked at this so far. What do you think would be the best way of going about this? I think that setting up a wiki might be the easiest but if anybody has any suggestions I would love to hear them. Like I said, I'm still learning so I don't know how much I will be able to help but I'll do everything I can.

I've never been a fan of Wiki for non publicly editable content. These tutorials would be closed, only editable by certain people, so the whole point of wiki would be null. I don't think we should go too much farther without talking to Wildhoney first, since any moves would require his aproval and help.

Should this work, do you want to take the lead? If you don't want to, I would be happy to take initiave in getting this started.

So what you're proposing is that anyone could write a section for the tutorial, anyone could write up some example code for a section, anyone could write up an exercise for a particular section but someone on the "editorial team" needs to approve it before it is included? That may not be a bad idea but I would really like it if anyone who wants to contribute is able to in some fashion. I agree that we need to talk with Wildhoney before we go too much further with this so we will know what we can and can not do.

I honestly don't feel that I know enough to take the lead on this. I would love to help out but I don't think leadership would be the place for me on this one.

Yes, that is exactly what I am talking about. Not everyone who writes knows what they are talking about, organization is also key. It would be an organizational nightmare to let any random person add or subtract when they felt like. Especially when we get to topics were more than one way can do the trick.


Fair enough. I'll get talking to Wildhoney about it soon. Even if you aren't that great at PHP, there will still be plenty of things to write.

I can definitely see where you are coming from with this. We would want to keep track of who contributed what ("This exercise was written by Village Idiot"). That way people who are new to the site and read it will see that it was a community effort and I think it will make people want to be more a part of it. That's the affect it would have on me anyway. Honestly, the articles written by members of this site are part of what drew me in. It's part of what made this place different from the other PHP boards.

Sweet, I appreciate you taking the initiative to get it rolling. I'm really excited about this, I think if we as a community do it right it could turn out great. I'm looking forward to helping out however I can.

Let me know if i can be of any assistance i be glad to help out!

-Cf

Although I'm pretty sceptic about the subject, if it will actually work I will also try to help out.

So who is setting up the wiki, or what is happening with this?

This is still talk between us, I am still in the process of writing a proposal for Wildhoney. However, I can assure you that we will not use Wiki if I am head. Now that I am giving it more serious thought, I am having a hard time with a few things. I will post more about that when I get my thoughts composed.

I have been giving this a lot of thought since I am creating a formal proposal, I am not so sure it is a great idea. The first issue is that we already have an excellent article system for articles that do not belong in a given sequence, this covers our advanced tutorials. Beginner tutorials are in my opinion fairly trivial for the following reasons:

• There are already countless beginners tutorials out there, I do not believe that a single original or worthwhile idea will originate in the process of our writing.
• Search engines already have their favorites, this probably would not help up too much SEO wise.
• We probably can't parallel, let alone top the better beginner tutorials out there.

This all in all would be a waste of our time. What would be a better use of our time is creating specific tutorials that haven't seen wide coverage. This allows us to gain search engine rankings and gives people a reason to choose us over somewhere else.

I whole heartedly agree with Village Idiot - Producing tutorials that can't be found elsewhere would be much more worthwhile, both in terms of experience to the writers and the boost that TalkPHP should (hopefully) see from it.