Regarding the question title, I've got a collection of such tips, which I would gladly share, Basic principles of web-programming.

Regarding the question asked in the last sentence: ask for a review. Working on an active project gives you 1x experience. Asking other devs to review this project and suggest improvements gives you 10x experience. There are places that are longing for the code to review! Namely, https://codereview.stackexchange.com/ or PHPHelp subreddit.

One of the ways I see beginners make their learning process harder than it should be is that they try to jump into ambitious projects right away. Example: "I'm going to make the next social media platform!"

I'll tell you how I started. I was in the computer lab at my college, and the manager of the computer center was walking by with a couple of books. He said, "I was going to recycle these, do you want them?" They were a collection of every UNIX man page, bound into two volumes. One for shell commands, the other for C library functions.

I enthusiastically said yes! I'd like those! This was at a time before the internet, before windows. It was hard to learn from online documentation, because reading man pages on screen, you had to close your code editor. Having the printouts next to me was a great thing.

How I used those books was to try each command and each C function, in small, throwaway programs. Not trying to use all of them at once in a complex project when I didn't know them yet. Just a single-purpose program to try out one thing at a time.

When the program's only purpose is to exercise a command or function, you don't care what the program does. You don't distract yourself from learning that command or function as you think about how it needs to do something important in your new social media app or whatever.

I still think this was a good way to learn. Similar to learning a musical instrument. For example, you don't pick up a guitar for the first time and jump straight to improvised jazz. You learn each chord and each strumming technique one at a time. Then you learn songs that use those chords, the simpler the song the better at first. As you get more confidence, you try more complex songs.

I think where many people get frustrated starting out is they try to take on too much at once.

One important thing: don’t rely on AI to build things for YOU

Read a new, thick book and practice.

You’re still at the beginning of web development, so struggling with dynamic projects is completely normal. That’s actually a good sign, it means you’re moving forward.

One important thing: don’t rely on AI to build things for you. Use it to understand concepts, to ask questions, to get explanations. But if you let it build everything, you won’t really learn. Your goal right now is to understand what you’re doing, not just get results.

Try to go step by step. Don’t jump into complex backend stuff directly. Start with something simple like CRUD operations (create, read, update, delete). That’s the foundation of almost every web app.

You don’t even need a database at the beginning. You can simulate things with simple data or even local storage just to understand how the logic works. Once you’re comfortable, then move to using a real database.

Also, don’t avoid JavaScript. A lot of beginners think “PHP is enough, I’ll skip JS because it’s hard”, but that’s a mistake. JavaScript is essential for the frontend, and later it connects very well with backend concepts too.

A good path would be:

• understand basic CRUD with PHP

• then connect it to a database

• then improve the frontend with JavaScript

And the most important part: practice a lot. Build small things, break them, fix them. That’s how you really improve.

This is a very inspiring story for me, and I’d like to thank you so much for your advice. It made me realize there are many things I haven’t tried—or rather, haven’t even considered—and it also helped me see the mistakes I’ve made. Thank you again.

Have you learnt Java Script yet learn Java Script first than try SQL and PHP, gl!

tambem estou tendo bastante dificuldade com estilo css

Figure out where exactly you are struggling with and then ask yourself why. Being able to identify the issues is also a skill that is quite important and it helps you to tackle these specific areas. You don't need to read an entire book about databases if you only have issues with the query syntax, etc. If you are able to break it down, you automatically get better at the whole thing.

I’d tried this before but hadn’t managed it; that’s when I realised just how poor I was at breaking things down into smaller steps. I’m going to spend a few more hours working on this, focusing on solving my problems. So thank you for your help. You helped me realise where I went wrong.

Thank you for your advice; I’ll give these a try. I’ve also taken note of your suggestions; as you said, I usually ask the AI simple questions like ‘what can I do?’ when I’m unsure about something.

I’m still struggling to organise my graphics cards; whenever I try to arrange them in a random order, I end up messing everything up.

The article may not have mentioned it, but yes, I do know JavaScript—though I’m not as good at it as you are. I make mistakes when working on certain forum features or modal functions, and I’m still working on fixing them. Thank you for your advice, though.

I’ve never thought of that before; I might pick up a few books to have on hand for when I’ve got some spare time or get stuck on something. Thank you

This looks like it will be very helpful; I haven’t had a proper look at it yet, but I’ve had a quick browse through it and I’m sure it will be useful. Thank you very much for sharing this, keeping me informed and offering your advice.