Talk:How to become a MediaWiki hacker

Archives:
 * 2002–2010

SELinux :(
Just a note that we need to put somewhere more useful sometime: SELinux makes it difficult to install MediaWiki, and so "do you have SELinux installed?" is a useful question to ask if someone's having a very hard time installing MediaWiki. Sumanah 08:03, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
 * This looks like a topic that should be included in a FAQ section of Manual:Installing MediaWiki or Manual:Errors and Symptoms. Actually, it's already at Manual:Errors and Symptoms. guillom 18:39, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Good basic HTML & JavaScript tutorials/resources

 * Crockford's JavaScript videos
 * basic HTML & CSS tutorials
 * Google's HTML/CSS/JS videos

Good examples of code to learn from
I talked with Aaron Schulz today and he mentioned that he'd prefer new developers only look at good code when seeking examples to admire and copy.
 * Message.php (well-structured, uses chaining)
 * FileBackend (less great, but good)

Testing
We also need more testers/debuggers. There are very few test wikis (basically only translatewiki.net serves as such!) and the beta cluster is unused. See Project:Test reports. Nemo 09:46, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

On learning PHP
Some recommendations I've heard:

One of the classics is the "Luke and Laura" book http://www.amazon.com/PHP-MySQL-Development-Luke-Welling/dp/0672317842 by Laura Thomson & WMF's Luke Welling. It's huge, pricey, but accessible and thorough. If you are a beginner, try one of the O'Reilly learning books, "Learning PHP" or "Learning PHP & MySQL". There's also zend's dev site, with some good articles: http://devzone.zend.com/

There is also a Head First book (from O'Reilly press) about PHP & MySQL.

Lastly, this includes resources and a free quiz: http://www.w3schools.com/php/default.asp Sharihareswara (WMF) (talk) 13:24, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Please do not promote W3Schools; they are perhaps the worst place in the world to learn PHP, as they provide tutorials and example code with significant security vulnerabilities, among many other issues. See, e.g., this example. Note that W3Schools is not affiliated with the W3C, it is a Norwegian company dedicated mostly to selling "certificates" of dubious veracity.
 * The official PHP manual is located here, and the current MySQL APIs are PDO (generally preferred, as it also supports other DBs) and MySQLi. Beware any tutorials or books that still promote the deprecated  functions; these are very old (PHP 2.0, released around 1998 or so), and don't support modern features like parameterized statements, thus many have the same security flaws as W3Schools.--CoJaBo (talk) 16:17, 26 May 2013 (UTC)