Udemy is a popular marketplace for affordable courses on a huge range of subjects. This includes high-quality options for anyone looking to learn PHP.
However, with so much choice it can be difficult to know which course to go for. Well, we are here to help.
In this top 10 review round-up, we have carefully selected 10 of the best PHP courses currently running on Udemy in 2022.
Whether you are an expert looking to develop your skills further, or a beginner wanting to learn the basics (and other needs in between) you will find something here to suit you.
For our top choice PHP courses at a glance, just head to the table below. For an in-depth review of each of the selected courses, keep on reading.
Table of Contents
Top 10 PHP Courses on Udemy
COURSE | TITLE | DETAILS | OUR RATING | |
 | BEST BEGINNER COURSE Complete 2021 PHP Full Stack Bootcamp | 48.5hrs of video 64 Articles | ||
 | PHP for Beginners: PDO, MySQL, phpMyAdmin | 2.5hrs of Video 3 Articles | ||
 | BEST BEGINNER PRACTICL COURSE PHP for Beginners | 14hrs of video 2 Resources 2 Articles 12 Exercises | ||
 | BEST BEGINNER OBJECT ORIENTATED COURSE Object Orientation in PHP | 5hrs of video 8 Resources | ||
 | BEST COMPLETE INTERMEDIATE COURSE Complete PHP MVC Course | 24.5 hrs of video 6 Articles | ||
 | Complete PHP MYSQL Professional Course | 20hrs of video 23 Articles Lifetime Access | ||
 | BEST OBJECT ORIENTATED FOR INTERMEDIATES Object Oriented PHP and MVC | 6.5hrs of video | ||
 | BEST FOR LOGIN SYSTEM CREATION Developing Registration and Login System | 5hrs of video | ||
 | BEST FOR PHP 7 Getting Started with PHP 7 | 4hrs of video | ||
 | Build Hospital System Using CodeIgniter Framework | 18.5hrs of video 1 Articles |
The Reviews
The following reviews focus on 10 of the best PHP courses that are currently being offered on Udemy.
Best PHP Courses for Beginners
1. TOP BEGINNER COURSE: Complete 2021 PHP Full Stack Web Developer Bootcamp
This comprehensive PHP course for beginners is designed for learners who want to venture into full-stack web development. It covers the basics of web development, including HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript, along with the JavaScript framework of Bootstrap.
It also covers WordPress, MySQL DBMS, and PHP, along with Object-oriented programming as it applies to PHP-based web development.
It also covers the PHP framework of Laravel. Moreover, there are lessons on cookies, sessions, and web forms. There are also introductory lessons on application programming interface (API) and REST.
As is evident, the student learns both front-end web development by learning web design, and back-end development by learning PHP and MySQL DBMS; and this allows the student to graduate from a noob into a junior web developer.
In this review, this is the best complete PHP course for beginners.
This 50-hour long course has 28 sections that cover 308 lectures. This course consists of 48.5 hours of on-demand subtitled lecture videos, 64 articles, and 21 downloadable resources, as well as a certificate of completion.
Registration gives one-lifetime access to these course contents. To date, over 130,500 students have taken this course, with 3,882 of these students giving it a rating of 4.4 out of 5.
This validates this course as a popular course with students. The last update to course contents was made in February 2021.
- Target Audience: Beginners who want to learn and use PHP in web development.
- Course Type: Tutorial with exercises.
- Rating: 4.4 following 3,882 ratings.
- Language: English with lecture videos featuring auto-generated English subtitles.
The Tutor
Srinivas Vanamala is a full stack web developer who serves as a Bootcamp instructor.
Requirements
- Basic knowledge of how to use a text editor.
- Internet-connected personal computer (PC).
Contents
- Introduction to the web.
- HTML editor setup and usage.
- HTML5
- CSS3.
- JavaScript.
- Bootstrap.
- PHP.
- Forms and Sessions.
- Cookies.
- MySQL.
- phpMyAdmin.
- PHP OOP.
- JSON.
- XML.
- REST and API.
- PHP frameworks.
This course can be accessed via an internet-enabled PC, smartphone, internet-enabled mobile device, or Smart TV.
2. PHP for Beginners 2022: PDO, MySQL, phpMyAdmin
This is a short PHP course that can serve as a continuation for the course reviewed above.
Basically, it is a course designed for beginners who have a basic understanding of how to use phpMyAdmin, and want to learn how to use PHP to write CRUD commands for working with a DBMS, in this case, MySQL.
The student learns how to use PHP to create a database and populate it via phpMyAdmin and SQL dump. Likewise, the student learns how PHP is used for creating CRUD statement that can be used to add, retrieve, change, and delete data in the database.
Moreover, the learner is taught how to use a CSV file to populate the database, as well as how to use PHP PDO to connect to the database. There are also lessons on Bootstrap.
This 3-hour long course has 5 sections that cover 30 lectures. This course consists of 2.5 hours of on-demand subtitled lecture videos, 3 articles, and 10 downloadable resources, as well as a certificate of completion.
Registration gives one-lifetime access to these course contents. To date, over 1,450 students have taken this course, with 243 of these students giving it a rating of 4.9 out of 5.
This makes this course one of the highest-rated courses in Udemy. The last update to course contents was made in June 2020.
- Target Audience: Beginners who want to learn and use PHP in web development.
- Course Type: Tutorial with exercises.
- Rating: 4.9 following 243 ratings.
- Language: English.
The Tutor
Patrick Morrow is a renowned coding instructor.
Requirements
- Basic knowledge of how to use a text editor.
- Internet-connected personal computer (PC).
- Installation of phpMyAdmin.
Contents
- Installation of CodeAnywhere.
- Setting up phpMyAdmin.
- Basics of phpMyAdmin.
- CRUD.
- HTML with PHP.
Apart from the internet-connected PC, this course can also be accessed using a smartphone or internet-connected Smart TV.
3. BEST BEGINNER PRACTICAL COURSE: PHP for Beginners
This beginner-level PHP course teaches the student how to build a content management system using PHP and the DBMS, MySQL.
The student is taught how to write a structured code using OOP techniques, and then style the website using the Bootstrap framework, as well as store and retrieve data from a relational database.
Additionally, the student learns how to integrate third-party codes into his/her website. Most importantly, it covers all the basics of PHP including CRUD operations, email management, and file upload.
As expected on any beginner course, this course starts with theory before progressing to practical coding. In this review, this is the best practical PHP course for beginners.
This 14.5 hour-long course has 31 sections that cover 199 lectures. This course consists of 14 hours of on-demand subtitled lecture videos, 2 articles, 12 coding exercises, and 2 downloadable resources, as well as a certificate of completion.
Registration gives one-lifetime access to these course contents. To date, over 7,500 students have taken this course, with 1,489 of these students giving it a rating of 4.6 out of 5.
The last update to course contents was made in January 2021.
- Target Audience: Beginners who want to learn and use PHP in web development.
- Course Type: Tutorial with exercises.
- Rating: 4.6 following 1,489 ratings.
- Language: English.
The Tutor
This course was developed by Dave Hollingworth and the Learn Programming Academy. The academy was founded by Tim Buchalka, an experienced software developer. Hollingworth is an IT trainer.
Requirements
- Basic knowledge of how to use a text editor.
- Internet-connected personal computer (PC).
Contents
- Installation of XAMPP and Atom code editor.
- HTML5.
- Variables and Arrays.
- Control Structures.
- PHP.
- Database.
- PHP with CRUD operations.
- Sessions.
- OOP PHP.
- Class autoloading.
- Site administration.
- JavaScript.
- CSS3.
- Emails.
- Error handling.
Apart from the internet-connected PC, this course can also be accessed using a smartphone or internet-connected Smart TV.
4. BEST BEGINNER OBJECT ORIENTATED COURSE: Object Orientation in PHP
This beginner-level PHP course focuses on objected-oriented programming as it relates to PHP programming. It can be taken after completing the Complete 2021 PHP Bootcamp course which has been reviewed above.
This is because the student is required to have a basic understanding of PHP, which excludes this course as an introductory course to PHP programming.
In this course, the student learns about the Unified Modeling Language (UML), class syntax, and sequence diagrams; as well as the core topics of the course which are object-oriented analysis and programming.
This includes the APIE of OOP – abstraction, polymorphism, inheritance, and encapsulation. This is the best beginner-grade PHP course for object-orientated analysis.
This 5-hour long course has 5 sections that cover 30 lectures. This course consists of 5 hours of on-demand subtitled lecture videos and 8 downloadable resources, as well as a certificate of completion.
Registration gives one-lifetime access to these course contents. To date, over 800 students have taken this course, with 248 of these students giving it a rating of 4.8 out of 5. The last update to course contents was made in March 2016.
- Target Audience: Beginners who want to learn and use PHP in web development.
- Course Type: Tutorial with exercises.
- Rating: 4.8 following 248 ratings.
- Language: English.
The Tutor
Lawrence Turton is a web developer and graphic designer.
Requirements
- Basic knowledge of how to use a text editor.
- Internet-connected personal computer (PC).
- Basic knowledge of PHP.
Contents
- Basics of OOP.
- APIE.
- UML.
- OOP design.
- Object orientated analysis.
- OOP members.
- Classes, interfaces, and traits.
This course can be accessed via an internet-enabled PC, smartphone, internet-enabled mobile device, or Smart TV.
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Best Intermediate-Level PHP Courses
5. BEST COMPLETE INTERMEDIATE COURSE: Complete PHP MVC Course
This comprehensive course teaches the student how to build an e-commerce website using PHP and the model-view-controller (MVC) framework.
This framework allows the student to know how to organize his/her PHPC code into models, controllers, and views. The student also learns about how to build apps using the Eloquent, which is an object-relational mapper (ORM) of Laravel.
As expected, this course allows the learner to become a full-stack web developer who understands how to build websites and web applications.
There are lessons on how to use Vue.JS for building front-end apps, and how to handle exceptions and errors, besides lessons on how to secure the system.
In this review, this is the most complete intermediate-level PHP course.
This 24.5 hour-long course has 23 sections that cover 144 lectures. This course consists of 24.5 hours of on-demand subtitled lecture videos, 6 articles, and 58 downloadable resources, as well as a certificate of completion.
Registration gives one-lifetime access to these course contents. To date, over 1,300 students have taken this course, with 378 of these students giving it a rating of 4.3 out of 5. The last update to course contents was made in November 2020.
- Target Audience: PHP programmers who want to become expert PHP programmers.
- Course Type: Tutorial with exercises.
- Rating: 4.3 following 378 ratings.
- Language: English with videos featuring French, Portuguese, Indonesian, Spanish, Italian, and English subtitles.
The Tutor
This course was developed by Terry Ogbemudia Osayawe, in partnership with the technology school, DevScreenCast. Terry is a software engineer.
Requirements
- Knowledge of how to use a text editor.
- Internet-connected personal computer (PC).
- Basic knowledge of PHP.
- Basic understanding of PHP OOP.
Contents
- PHP MVC.
- Front-end architectures.
- Relational database.
- Eloquent ORM.
- Error handling.
- Creating admin panel.
- OOP request validation.
- OOP user authentication.
- App deployment.
Apart from the internet-connected PC, this course can also be accessed using a smartphone or internet-connected Smart TV.
6. Complete PHP MYSQL Professional Course
This comprehensive course teaches the student how to build a complete content management system using PHP and MySQL. There are 5 projects that the student needs to complete.
Among the tasks that the student undertakes in this course include building an admin panel, web forms, and form validation system.
This course covers PHP fundamentals, along with some tips and tricks on how to use PHP to build dynamic web pages. There are also lessons on PDO, securing the CMS, URL tracking, and using Bootstrap 4.2.1.
The student will also learn how to build an employee management system using PHP with CRUD commands.
This 20.5 hour-long course has 12 sections that cover 156 lectures. This course consists of 20 hours of on-demand subtitled lecture videos, 23 articles, and a downloadable resource, as well as a certificate of completion.
Registration gives one-lifetime access to these course contents. To date, over 43,600 students have taken this course, with 2,199 of these students giving it a rating of 4.3 out of 5.
The last update to course contents was made in March 2021.
- Target Audience: PHP programmers who want to become expert PHP programmers.
- Course Type: Tutorial with exercises.
- Rating: 4.3 following 2,199 ratings.
- Language: English with videos featuring autogenerated English subtitles.
The Tutor
Jazeb Akram is a software developer and data scientist.
Requirements
- Knowledge of how to use a text editor.
- Internet-connected personal computer (PC).
- Basic knowledge of HTML.
Contents
- Installation of XAMPP.
- PHP Fundamentals.
- Variables.
- Regular expressions.
- Front-end architectures.
- Relational database.
- Form validation.
- CRUD application.
Apart from the internet-connected PC, this course can also be accessed using a smartphone or internet-connected Smart TV.
7. BEST OBJECT ORIENTATED FOR INTERMEDIATES: Object Oriented PHP and MVC
This specialist course teaches the student how to build an MVC framework and create PDO classes for handling database interactions.
As expected, this is a hands-on course that requires the student to have a firm understanding of basic PHP programming so that (s)he can use his/her knowledge, along with knowledge gained in this course to build applications.
In fact, after building his/her custom MVC framework, the student uses this framework to build an app. There are also lessons on how to use PDO and OOP for user authentication.
In this review, this is the best intermediate-level PHP course for learning an objected-orientated framework.
This 7-hour long course has 7 sections that cover 44 lectures. This course consists of 6.5 hours of on-demand subtitled lecture videos and 37 downloadable resources, as well as a certificate of completion.
Registration gives one-lifetime access to these course contents. To date, over 13,900 students have taken this course, with 3,734 of these students giving it a rating of 4.8 out of 5. The last update to course contents was made in November 2017.
- Target Audience: PHP programmers who want to become expert PHP programmers.
- Course Type: Tutorial with exercises.
- Rating: 4.8 following 3,734 ratings.
- Language: English with videos featuring autogenerated French, Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian subtitles.
The Tutor
Brad Traversy is a software programmer and full-stack web developer.
Requirements
- Knowledge of how to use a text editor.
- Internet-connected personal computer (PC).
- Basic knowledge of PHP.
- Basic understanding of PHP OOP.
Contents
- Installation of XAMPP.
- PHP MVC.
- Front-end architectures.
- Database.
- OOP user authentication.
- Post functionality.
- App deployment.
Apart from the internet-connected PC, this course can also be accessed using a smartphone or internet-connected Smart TV.
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8. BEST FOR LOGIN SYSTEM CREATION: Developing Registration and Login System
This specialist course teaches the student how to use PHP for making a login system that supports sessions, account activation, password reset, and account registration.
As expected, this login system is based on an MVC framework, and the student is taught how to develop this system so that it remembers the user who has logged in, as well as allow the email used during registration to be used for password resetting.
Likewise, there are lessons on how to build a system that can securely store passwords in a database, restrict content to registered accounts, and use cookies for session management. Additionally, one learns how to use CSS for building the UI of the project.
In this review, this is the best PHP course for login system creation.
This 5.5-hour long course has 14 sections that cover 106 lectures. This course consists of 5 hours of on-demand subtitled lecture videos and 91 downloadable resources, as well as a certificate of completion.
Registration gives one-lifetime access to these course contents.
To date, over 2,500 students have taken this course, with 567 of these students giving it a rating of 4.9 out of 5, which makes this course one of the highest-rated courses in udemy. The last update to course contents was made in July 2017.
- Target Audience: PHP programmers who want to become expert PHP programmers.
- Course Type: Tutorial with exercises.
- Rating: 4.9 following 567 ratings.
- Language: English.
The Tutor
Dave Hollingworth is an IT trainer.
Requirements
- Knowledge of how to use a text editor.
- Internet-connected personal computer (PC).
- Basic knowledge of PHP.
- Basic understanding of MVC.
Contents
- Setup MVC framework and web server.
- Database.
- Build login system.
- User authentication.
- Cookies and sessions.
- Account security.
- CSS and UI.
Apart from the internet-connected PC, this course can also be accessed using a smartphone or internet-connected Smart TV.
Best Expert-Level PHP Courses
9. BEST FOR PHP 7: Getting Started with PHP 7
This is a specialist course designed to teach the learner the main features of PHP 7. As can be expected, this course was released before PHP 8 was made public and PHP 7 was the most advanced PHP version then.
Still, PHP 7 is still in use, and one can learn how to use advanced OOP techniques with PHP 7, including autoloading, inheritance, traits, and namespace.
This course teaches how dependency management is used with PHP, as well as advanced PHP techniques including recursive function and anonymous.
Design principles are also covered, which allows the learner to write complex, clean, and extensible codes that can be easily maintained.
Among the principles covered are MVC, repository, factory, and singleton. In this review, this is the best course for PHP 7.
This 4-hour long course has 8 sections that cover 48 lectures. This course consists of 4 hours of on-demand subtitled lecture videos, which are followed by a certificate of completion.
Registration gives one-lifetime access to these course contents. To date, over 1,400 students have taken this course, with 336 of these students giving it a rating of 4.7 out of 5. The last update to course contents was made in February 2017.
- Target Audience: PHP programmers who want to gain more expertise in using PHP.
- Course Type: Tutorial with exercises.
- Rating: 4.7 following 336 ratings.
- Language: English.
The Tutor
Packt Publishing is a renowned developer of programming courses and publisher of programming books.
Requirements
- Basic knowledge of PHP.
- Basic understanding of OOP.
Contents
- Setup PHP 7, MySQL DBMS, and Apache web server.
- PHP 7.
- Advanced PHP techniques.
- Databases.
- OOP with PHP7.
- Principles of SOLID – These are single responsibility principles, Open closed Principle, Liskov substitution, Interface segregation, and Depency inversion principles.
- Design patterns.
Apart from the internet-connected PC, this course can also be accessed using a smartphone or internet-connected Smart TV.
10. Build Hospital System Using CodeIgniter Framework
This is a practical specialist course last updated in October 2020 that teaches the student how to use PHP with the CodeIgniter Framework to build web apps and a complete Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software for a hospital.
As expected, the student learns how to use a PHP framework for building web apps and web systems.
This allows the student to learn how to build complex administrative panels and design data panels using PHP. Likewise, the learner is taught how to secure his/her web apps. To take this course, the learner must understand PHP 7 and CSS.
This 19-hour long course has 21 sections that cover 179 lectures. This course consists of 18.5 hours of on-demand subtitled lecture videos, and articles, and 22 downloadable resources, along with a certificate of completion.
Registration gives one-lifetime access to these course contents. To date, over 280 students have taken this course, with 57 of them giving it a rating of 4.2 out of 5. The last update to course contents was made in October 2020.
- Target Audience: PHP programmers who want to gain more expertise in using PHP.
- Course Type: Tutorial with exercises.
- Rating: 4.2 following 57 ratings.
- Language: English.
The Tutor
Olawuyi Segun Orisunola is a full-stack web developer.
Requirements
- Basic knowledge of PHP 7.
- Basic understanding of CSS.
Contents
- Setup of WAMP, CodeIgniter, and Text Editor.
- CodeIgniter.
- Admin Template.
- Build Login Page.
- System navigation.
- System settings.
- Error handling.
- Building an ERP system.
Apart from the internet-connected PC, this course can also be accessed using a smartphone or internet-connected Smart TV.
A Short Guide to PHP
For a website to work, it needs client software (which is usually a browser) and server software that can communicate with the webpage opened in the browser.
When the user requests a webpage from the website, this request is sent to the server software (such as Apache HTTP Server) installed in the server, and it is this software that locates the webpage in the database of the website, and then sends it back to the browser.
The webpage is located by the server software based on its uniform resource locator (URL) address. The URL is a subset of the uniform resource identifier (URI).
The URI can contain instructions on which server program the server should run in order to retrieve the web resource. This program understands specific programming languages collectively described as server-side programming languages.
One of these programming languages is PHP.
What is PHP?
PHP is an open-source, free to use programming language was created to write dynamic and interactive webpages, as well as work with server-side logic, including user authentication.
PHP is used to write codes that make a webpage dynamic, as well as allow the website to communicate with other services such as the database management system (DBMS) and email services.
This PHP code can be embedded in the extensible HTML (XHTML) code of a webpage. Webpages that contain PHP code can have the .php extension in their URLs. Still, PHP code can be included in HTML code.
PHP can also be used to write a CRUD (Create-Read-Update-Delete) application to work with a DBMS.
History of PHP
PHP was developed by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994, and he authored the initial two versions of PHP. Programmer Lerdoff had created a set of Perl scripts which he used in the development of his personal website where he posted his resume.
Later, he transcribed these scripts into a set of C codes which could then be compiled into common gateway interface (CGI) binaries. CGI allows web server software to run an external program.
He also included a Form Interpreter (FI) in these CGI binaries, and this was the initial development of PHP/FI.
In 1997, a new parser for PHP/FI was developed by Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski, and this allowed for PHP 3.0 to be developed.
Later, Gutmans and Suraski developed the Zend I engine that was used in PHP 4, and then the Zend II engine that was used in PHP 5.
In 2014, Dmitry Stogov, Nikita Popov, and Xinchen Hui authored a new PHP branch called PHP Next Generation (phpng), and this required a reworking of the Zend II engine which ultimately led to the development of Zend Engine 3. phpng lay the foundation for developing PHP 7 which was publicly released in 2015.
The current version of PHP is PHP 8 which was released in November 2020 and supports Just-in-Time (JIT) compilation using its JIT compiler.
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PHP as a Programming Language
As mentioned, PHP code can be encoded in a .php webpage, and when the server software processes this webpage, it runs the PHP code and does what the code instructs, which is usually instructions of how the server software should relay the output of the code back to the browser.
The primary paradigm of PHP is the procedural paradigm, and later it adopted the object-oriented paradigm.
Fundamentals
PHP allows the code to declare a variable. Just like in C programming, the variable in PHP is a name assigned to a memory location, which can be filled with data. PHP also allows one to define a constant, which is a value that does not change during the execution of the program.
There are 5 primitive data types in PHP, and they are the Integer, Float, Boolean, String, and Undefined data types.
Also, just like in C programming, there is an array in PHP. This array contains a list of elements that belong to the same data type.
Function in PHP is a block of code that performs a specific action, and this code can be re-used in the program. PHP comes with predefined functions, and also supports user-defined functions.
There are also condition statements in PHP, and these statements are divided into 3 types; the IF statement, the IF-ELSE statement, and the SWITCH statement.
Like in C programming, the condition statement in PHP is basically a set of predefined rules that determine which action (from a set of actions) will be performed if a specified condition is satisfied.
Another related programming tool used in PHP is the loop. A loop is a conditional code that is repeated until a set condition is satisfied. There are 3 main types of loops in PHP; the FOR loop, WHILE loop, and DO WHILE loop.
Merits of PHP
- The free and open-source language that is easy to learn.
- Efficiency in web development.
- Support for DBMS integration that allows it to support many DBMS such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Oracle.
- Built-in libraries allow the programmer to connect easily to other web services, work with cookies, create GIF images, and even generate PDF documents on the fly.
- PHP code is highly portable and can work on any Unix-based operating system (OS), including Windows OS and MacOS.
- Excellent scripting language for building complex websites that have high traffic (e.g Amazon) and host emails (e,g Gmail), as well as complex bulletin boards and secure websites like Novasis.
So where can one learn PHP programming? The best place where one can learn PHP regardless of his knowledge level is Udemy.com, with the 10 courses reviewed above being a great starting point.
