PHP for Front-End Devs; The Story

Recently, a few friends of mine have been asking questions about PHP and want to learn the basics. I am a front-end developer for a web design agency. i.e. I mainly stick to HTML/CSS and have colleagues who do the heavy PHP stuff. However, I think its handy for a front end dev to know the basics of PHP, as it speeds up development time and mean, for me, that i don't have to annoy the other guys every time i need a loop or something.

For that reason I am going to write a small series of Blog posts  - #PHPFED. If you have any suggestions or any questions, tweet me.

I am trying to combat the cliched tutorials that are out there and I'm going to try and provide code that is actually useful. I remember looking back for PHP tutorials and finding:

$a = 'Hello World';
echo $a; //Returns 'Hello World'

Its all well and good, but it makes you think 'Why do I need that?'. The next step is normally database integration with some sort of complex code.

This series is aimed at beginners, who just want some really simple functions and instructions to make their lives happier, easier and simpler. I am by no means a PHP expert, but I know the basics enough to show someone else the basics.

With this series of tutorials, I assume you know basic HTML, CSS and have at least heard of PHP.