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The glue that keeps a community together, albeit online or offline, is communication. It is especially vital to include, encourage and exercise tools of communication when creating or growing online communities because it is so easy to disengage with one click of a finger. There are two steps that are crucial to take in order for an online community to actively thrive: choosing the right community-building tools and applying them correctly. If you choose the wrong tools to build a community, then everyone will suffer the consequences. Every community has unique qualities that will shape its character, which determines what features will need to be implemented. Once a community has determined its needs, utilizing an open source software package, or content management system, it will take the vision into online reality and search engine optimization success.

Choosing an open source content management system, like Drupal, allows you the functionality and ability to build and use every tool under the sun. As technology and search engine optimization continue to evolve at a near-frightening rate, you will be able to adapt Drupal to meet the changes that the Internet brings. Drupal is very reactive to changes and with a little bit of knowledge and guidance, anyone can make the necessary tweaks. Open source CMSs not only keep pace with changes in trends, but they drive innovation by allowing any individual or community the access to resources that can create new technologies for the system. Drupal not only puts innovation in the consumers’ hands, but encourages them to innovate themselves. I believe that is called a win/win.

Open source projects are community-driven, and communities are driven through the coordination and efforts of many individuals working together with the right tools. Embracing the aspects of open source will allow online communities to share collective wisdom from other existing communities or individuals within the larger community. There are hundreds of regional Drupal communities all over the world that are getting together to dork out together. Chances are there plenty of people in your immediate area that may be available to help you solve whatever issue or crisis you are dealing with. People who unite over a passion want nothing more than to help each other out.

Open source communities, like Drupal, are built upon the philosophy of collaboration. Organizational collaboration is a very powerful way to create innovative features and applications for the community. There is nothing more inspirational than seeing an idea become a reality, with the help of a community. But communities need to be nurtured to thrive. Just because it is an “open source” community, doesn’t mean that everything that is thrown on the table is going to work efficiently. The proper understanding of the community needs, implementing open source technologies, like Drupal, and staying actively involved will help an online, open source community stay on the crest of any technological wave.

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When you are trying to learn a new programming language like PHP, it can get a bit intimidating, especially if you have never had experience with other programming languages before. But trust me, the toughest hurdle is really the starting point. Once you have gotten over that, it is really just a matter of keeping your focus and practicing. Be patient and learn the steps one at a time and you will get there. Here are some tips to help you learn simple PHP:

Learn the basics.

To learn a new language, specifically a programming language, you will need to have basic computer skills. Before you can learn PHP, you need to have a basic background on HTML. This is necessary to make PHP easier to grasp. Plus, you can alternate between the two later on using the same document.

PHP is a language that uses scripting and often used with HTML to supplement functions that HTML lacks. With PHP, you can collect and process data, make comparisons and calculations things that you can not do with HTML. Using this skill, you can create other functions to produce data that is more specialized.

Get the tools.

To create PHP pages, you will need a text editor. A plain text editor is a program that lets you edit files in plain text. These are the ones that come with extensions such as. php, .cgi, .html, etc. These types of text editors will not save formatting on the file, only the plain text. If you have been using a text editing program for your HTML file, that will do. you will probably use either Notepad (for Windows) or Text Edit (for Mac).

Get an FTP.

A File Transfer Protocol or FTP is used to exchange files from your computer to a remote server. This is the one we use to connect on a LAN or to an Internet site.

Get busy.

Once you have the right tools, you will have to practice creating files using PHP. There are some very important stuff that you will need to learn, including basic mathematics and IF statements and using variables. you will have to go through these first before you can hope to build a reliable PHP file.

Once you know your way around these skills, you can then start learning about loops. Loops are just your basic true or false statements that will perform repetitive actions again and again until certain conditions are met. After mastering the loops, you can then learn how to write your very own functions. Once you have learned how to manipulate the codes to create your desired result, there is virtually no limit to what you can do.

Online resources for learning simple PHP

You can not possibly learn simple PHP from a single short article like this, so it is best to expand your knowledge and turn to other resources like books and online sites. Some sites to check out:

PHP.About.com

There are several articles on this site that discuss the most basic information you need to know to learn simple PHP. This is a great source for web based tutorial that features clear step by step instructions on using PHP, HTML, XML and MySQL databases.

PHP Buddy.com

This site contains Quick Start tutorials on PHP and scripts that will make it easy for you to learn the program easily. This includes a brief introduction and learning basic PHP syntax. There are also valuable tutorials on using cookies, data inscription and working with functions and sessions using PHP.

PHP Freaks.com

This is a site for people who want to learn both PHP and MySQL. The site has 90 tutorials on PHP, more than 400 PHP code examples and nearly 3,000 articles that discuss various information, tips and tricks to make learning simple PHP quick and easy.