PHP Bootcamp
A 30-day plan that takes you from "what's a variable?" to "I can ship a small PHP app, talk to MySQL, write tests, deploy to a server."
Week 1 — Foundations
| Day | Lessons |
|---|---|
| 1 | Intro, install, syntax, comments |
| 2 | Variables, types, casting |
| 3 | Strings, numbers, math, operators |
| 4–5 | If/else, switch, match, while, for, foreach |
| 6 | Functions, arrow functions, callbacks |
| 7 | Practice — solve 10 small problems in the editor |
Week 2 — Arrays, Strings, OOP
| Day | Lessons |
|---|---|
| 8 | Indexed + associative arrays |
| 9 | Array functions, sort, multi-dim arrays |
| 10 | Regex (preg_*), string formatting |
| 11 | Classes, constructors, visibility |
| 12 | Inheritance, abstract, interfaces, traits |
| 13 | Namespaces, autoloading via Composer |
| 14 | Enums, readonly, modern PHP idioms |
Week 3 — Web & Data
| Day | Lessons |
|---|---|
| 15 | Superglobals, request handling |
| 16 | Forms — validation, redirect-after-POST |
| 17 | Sessions, cookies |
| 18 | File handling, uploads |
| 19 | JSON, dates, exceptions |
| 20–21 | PDO — connect, CRUD, prepared statements, transactions |
Week 4 — Build & Ship
| Day | Topic |
|---|---|
| 22 | Composer + first real project |
| 23 | Routing (Slim, FastRoute) or a framework (Laravel quickstart) |
| 24 | Templating — plain PHP includes vs Twig vs Blade |
| 25 | Sending email, logging |
| 26 | Tests with PHPUnit / Pest |
| 27 | Static analysis with PHPStan or Psalm |
| 28 | Deploy — shared hosting vs Forge / Ploi / Docker |
| 29–30 | Capstone — tiny CMS, blog, or REST API |
Tip: Pick a capstone that you'd use yourself. Code you'll actually run is code you'll actually remember.
Example
Example
<?php // 30-day PHP bootcamp: // Week 1: syntax, types, control flow // Week 2: functions, arrays, strings, files // Week 3: OOP — classes, interfaces, traits, namespaces // Week 4: forms, sessions, MySQL, Composer, Laravel intro echo 'Pick a capstone — a tiny blog, CMS, or API.';Try it Yourself »
Exercise
Bootcamp duration.
days
Two digits.
Discussion
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