: What resources are available to get an experienced .net developer up and running quickly with Wordpress/PHP development? Specifically, what are the preferred development tools (free?) Are there

@Steve110

If you are looking to get a PHP environment locally, take a look at: XAMPP for Windows. That will give you Apache/MySQL/PHP, sort of a WebApp Holy Trinity: you will be hard pressed to do any one without the others.

Code it locally, I cannot imagine the pain of a development cycle involving an "upload to server" step. It is cross platform enough that you will be able to develop in Windows but host on Unix. You could host it using the same technologies for Windows too, but don't tell anyone I said that.

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@Pierce454

As far as development environments go, Smashing Magazine has a great lineup of widely-used PHP IDEs that compare their major features. In Windows, I've used both Notepad++ and Aptana. Aptana had more features and worked pretty well, but it had a bit of a learning curve (which could be a plus or a minus depending on how patient you are) and Notepad++ was a bit too lightweight for me to consider it a legitimate PHP IDE.

As for documentation, artlung is absolutely right about the online docs for both Wordpress and PHP. It's the first and last place I always go.

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@Dunderdale272

All the documentation for both WordPress and PHP development are online.


WordPress Codex
PHP.net Manual


If you're an experienced programmer run through the PHP Tutorials and basic WordPress theming and plugin development and that should get you a long way along.

You might also check these SO questions: What is the best PHP programming book? and Common programming mistakes for PHP developers to avoid?

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