Beginner

• Find learning materials that teach the basics of PHP. You can start by visiting our “resources” section for PHP and looking at each of the “beginner” resources.
• Set up your PHP development environment on your local machine and start practicing.
• Familiarize yourself with the syntax.
• Work on exercises and assignments by following tutorials. Start creating small applications to get more hands-on experience with PHP.
• Make sure to practice with every concept you learn. The more practice you do, the easier it will be to recall the concept. Plus, practice makes perfect!
• Create a study plan that you can follow consistently each week. A little each week is better than trying to do a whole lot every day, and then failing and giving up.

Intermediate

• By the intermediate stage, you should be able to understand MVC patterns and PHP classes. 
• Build your own basic PHP app using a framework of your choice like Laravel or PHPCake and launch it live to Heroku, Digital Ocean, AWS Lightsail, or something similar.
• Don’t give up---it’s often in the middle of the program (or right before you start) that you can easily lose momentum, confidence, and enthusiasm.  Keep up the good work!
• Be sure to review all of our “intermediate” resources in this handbook.
• Join the Break Diving community and share your dreams and thoughts with friends!

Advanced

• By this stage, you should be very familiar with (if not a master) of PHP documentation. You should be able to comfortably review the documentation for various unknown methods to quickly and easily get a grasp of what they do.  
• Start focusing on optimization and performance. The goal is not just to code something that works, but something that works both correctly and efficiently.
• It's time to refactor---find old code you have written and see if there is a faster/ more efficient way of making it happen.
• Visit our “resources” section for PHP and review each of the “advanced” resources.
• Join the Break Diving community and share your dreams and thoughts with friends (if you haven’t done so already)!