Super beginner non-developer question

[Thromisios]

Hi

I am completely new to ProcessWire and I am not a developer. 

I do have some basic understanding about HTML, css, etc and a bit of Python, but I am not a developer at all.

I am loving it from what I am reading about what ProcessWire can do, and it's amazing!

I was wondering if any could advise if a non-developer like myself can learn to use ProcessWire without development experience?

Or should I just start with PHP, or a specific framework that you'd recommend which would help me understand ProcessWire and code my projects?

Thank you so much!

[pwired]

Hi and welcome to Processwire and the Forum.
This returning question has already been asked many times.
You can find all your answers posted for this question
in the forum. Did you search the forum already ?

 

[Andy]

Hello @Thromisios

First, I would refer you to the ProcessWire documentation - https://processwire.com/docs/start/

And then, look through the sections of the forum:

• https://processwire.com/talk/forum/8-getting-started/
• https://processwire.com/talk/forum/13-tutorials/
• https://processwire.com/talk/forum/6-faqs/

Next, I would look at the sections of the forum and documentation that raise more questions for me.

And of course https://www.php.net/ when you don't understand how PHP works.

Good luck with your adventures.

 

[Thromisios]

Thank you very much @Andy! will do so!

[Thromisios]

9 hours ago, pwired said:

Hi and welcome to Processwire and the Forum.
This returning question has already been asked many times.
You can find all your answers posted for this question
in the forum. Did you search the forum already ?

 

Thanks!

You are right, I missed that, I did not search properly on the forum.

Please remove my question if possible, thank you!

[Gideon So]

Hi @Thromisios

Welcome to the PorcessWire community. I came from non coder background, too. I first started learning ProcessWire basics by following this tutorial.

Gideon

[bernhard]

Hey @Thromisios welcome to the forum ? 

21 hours ago, Thromisios said:

I was wondering if any could advise if a non-developer like myself can learn to use ProcessWire without development experience?

Or should I just start with PHP, or a specific framework that you'd recommend which would help me understand ProcessWire and code my projects?

In my opinion: ProcessWire is perfect for this scenario!

Why I think that:

• ProcessWire has a very active and friendly community that will always be there to help (that's very important when learning something new). I used other systems before ProcessWire and in their forum you never knew if you would get an answer or not. Terrible. In the PW forum you'll almost instantly get great answers or even ready to use code snippets or even modules ?
• ProcessWire hides a lot of complexity in the beginning. That makes it easy to use and you can come very far by using a few very basic concepts. Often it's just using fields together with the API. On the other hand ProcessWire is capable of so much more. That's all hidden under the hood and once you grow, you can start exploring more and more of it's features. In other systems you'll have to learn a lot upfront just to get simple things done. For example with other PHP frameworks you'd have to build the admin interface for your users completely from scratch (not all systems of course, but there are many where you have to do so).
• Hooks are such a brilliant concept that not every system has. Most of the time when you want a small customization of your system/program/website that means a small snippet of code. In other systems you often need to understand the whole OOP model to extend the correct class or you need to build a plugin or an extension. In ProcessWire you hook into the correct spot (if you don't find that the forum will help) and you add some simple lines of PHP and you get what you want.
• We have Adrian's great TracyDebugger which is such a huge help while developing. Just a simple dump of a variable is so much more helpful than doing a var_dump(). Other systems might have similar tools, but there are for sure systems that don't have anything like that. For me it was an eye opener in many cases.

For the last part you can head over to my signature link "afraid of hooks?"

A simple example could be:

<?php
// send me an email when the client adds a new blog post
$wire->addHookAfter("Pages::added", function($event) {
  $page = $event->arguments(0);
  
  // only execute this hook for pages of type "blog-post"
  if($page->template != 'blog-post') return;
  
  // send mail
  $mail = new WireMail();
  $mail->to('your@mail.com');
  $mail->from('robot@yoursite.com');
  $mail->subject('New blog post at yoursite.com');
  $mail->bodyHTML("Url of the new post: ".$page->httpUrl());
  $mail->send();
});

Good luck and have fun ? 

[elabx]

13 hours ago, Gideon So said:

Welcome to the PorcessWire community. I came from non coder background, too. I first started learning ProcessWire basics by following this tutorial.

OMG what is this gem I hadn't seen! Thanks @Gideon So!

[Andy]

@Thromisios

By the way, Ryan wrote an article on how to start a PW installation.

https://processwire.com/blog/posts/starting-with-the-blank-profile/

It can be helpful.