If you are a self-taught programmer learning PHP you may feel a little overwhelmed with all the jargon and snippets of code you have to learn. Trying to remember every piece of code you will need to use to build a website is a massive task and one which takes some time.

When it comes to PHP you need to think of it as another language. Once you can understand what different code snippets do you will start to understand when and where you need to use them?

Often people start off by looking up the code that they need, but over time you need to start to understand what the code is actually doing and how it works. For example, understanding that one bit of code is referring to another page or a style sheet will help you learn where to use it and if there is a problem, trace it back to find out what is causing it.

You may want to build up a bank of code – adding snippets to a text file that you can refer to later. This will not only help you program quicker by copying and pasting the code but also the more you use it the more confident you will become with it. Eventually you may find it just as quick and easy to type it out rather than referring to your code bank.