PHP Projects can help you elevate your developer skills. You can learn a lot by making projects than barely watching tutorials. In this article, we bring you the best PHP-based projects you can make yourself with the reference to the source code.
Table of Contents
Introduction
PHP is quite a popular programming language among web developers including PHP projects. It is a server-side scripting language used for adding dynamic content to your web pages and interact with the backend and databases.
How to make a PHP project from scratch?
A complete or call it a full-stack PHP application has various components that you will need to bring together to make your PHP project.
Front-end Technology
A full-stack application majorly has two components – the frontend and the backend. The frontend is the user interface that the client or the user interacts with. HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are inevitable when you make a web application’s frontend. You can decide upon your project idea and start with making the user interface.
If you are fluent in frontend technologies such as javascript frameworks such as React, Angular, Vue, and CSS libraries such as Bootstrap Tailwind CSS, semantic UI, and Material UI, you can make your frontend using them. This can help you improve your interface by making your web application responsive, using material design, and make PWA (progressive web application).
Database
When you want to have dynamic content on your webpages rather than just static content typed directly into the HTML, you require a database. PHP provides compatibility with almost all major databases such as MySQL, Oracle, and MS SQL. You can choose according to your convenience. You will have to create your database requirements and design the relations(tables) accordingly.
PHP Environment
Now that your frontend and database is ready, it is time to bring them together. You will be writing your php script in a .php extension file. It is that simple but when you dealing with a project level code, you need extra software and technologies to improve your coding efficiency.
Code Editor and IDEs
You can simply use notepad or word files to code but that is not as effective as a developer needs. To tackle this problem, we have specific code editors. They are functional with features such as syntax highlighting and auto code completion.
You get the additional features of search and replace, view folder structure and even embedded terminals in some. This makes the whole coding experience and maintaining a large code base easier, readable and collaboration-friendly. Some of the popular code editors are:
- Atom
- Visual Studio Code
- Bracket
- Sublime Text
- Notepad++
Integrated Development Environment abbreviated as IDEs are a more advanced and comprehensive software tool to make your project development experience smooth and a single space experience rather relying on multiple softwares. Text editors are mainly focused on coding whereas IDEs also have provision for testing, debugging, version control, and other development related features. Some of the popular IDEs used for PHP development are:
- Zend Studio
- Komodo
- PhpStrom
- Eclipse
- Netbeans
- Rapid PHP Editor
Web Server
PHP is a server-side scripting language. It won’t run on your web-browser since it is client-side. You will need a webserver to run your PHP scripts and render the project code. IDEs such as PhpStrom have a built-in web server that can be used to preview and debug the project. It is always running and requires no manual configuration. Otherwise, you will have to install a web server on your system.
The most commonly used servers are WAMP and XAMPP. They are free and open-source software that you can easily download from here and here respectively. Once you successfully install and configure the server. You will have to start and stop the server manually every time you want to preview and work with the PHP code.
You don’t need to worry that you can’t get started to code in php if you are stuck with the setup. You can use the online editors and IDEs. The most popular editors and IDEs online, you can use are :
- https://sandbox.onlinephpfunctions.com/
- http://phpfiddle.org/
- https://onecompiler.com/php
- https://www.onlinegdb.com/online_php_interpreter
- https://www.w3schools.com/php/php_compiler.asp
You can use them for compiling your code and run in the browser but it is preferred to have a local setup.
PHP Projects
You can make some really cool projects using PHP. These can be real-world applications with the database. You can refer to the following projects with their source code to refer:
1. Online Examination Management
Covid times have forced us to opt for the online mode of education. This project can be a real-world problem that you can solve with your PHP skills. You can make an online examination management system where you make different modules for professors and students to register and login to their portals. Teachers get to update the question papers and marking schemes. Students can view the tests and submit their answer sheets.
2. Online College Voting system
Elections and votings are a common scene at colleges and universities. You can make your very own portal for such elections. It can be a web application where voters can log in and cast their votes for an ongoing election. You will need to create admin and voter panels. Email and password authentication can be done. The features such as forget the password, each voter castes vote only once, email notification on results can be your programming skill enhancers.
3. E- Restaurant Management System
Nowadays everything has gone online. Restaurant bookings and customer interaction has also moved the same way. Restaurants can have featured on their website to allow customers pre-book tables online, order food in advance, read review and comment. You can make a PHP based web application for it.
4. Image Editor Online
Image editing such as adding filters, adjusting contrast and brightness is one of the most commonly used features in mobile phones. Ever thought of making one such application yourself? Yes, you can make one such web application and apply on image and make it as you desire.
5. Social Media Application
Social media application such as Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter and Instagram are quite popular in today’s time. You can be curious about being a developer to make one such application yourself. You will be learning a lot of new concepts and database management skill while designing a social media website.
You can always go your way and explore some of the best repositories and open source projects to find inspiration. You can learn from other people’s code and make your own innovative projects. You can look for public repositories on Github.
Some more websites that you can refer are :
- https://codeshoppy.com/php-projects-titles-topics.html
- https://freeprojectsforall.com/best-php-project-ideas-2018/
Frequently Asked Questions
A PHP project is basically a full-stack application. PHP is the intermediate between your front-end and to the database.
There are tons of websites but you can even use Github with the option to view the source there itself.
As a beginner, You should focus more on understanding the concepts and working with the language. The programming details and foundational knowledge such as database connection, handling, array manipulation and request variables will plays major role ahead. So build smaller application components as project such add contacts, view contact for a contact management system.
Conclusion
PHP is still in demand in the IT industry. There are advanced PHP frameworks that you can work with and give your career a leap as a PHP developer.
This article intended to give you a headstart with development and projects in PHP. Projects play an important role to consolidate and strengthen your understanding of a language.
