I'm an idiot...

...I'm a big fat stupid idiot and I will fully admit to it. However in order to rectify this I need someone to be nice to me:
OK, I don't know any programming languages (I tried to learn BASIC when I was 7 and failed miserably), and now I find myself in a situation where I have to program a message board using PHP and no-one is around to help me. I believe the term is: 'stercus stercus stercus, moriturus sum'.
So, could someone point me in the direction of actually being able to learn stuff? Please? In a big please way?

If you want a crash course, the SAMS book "Teach yourself PHP in 24 hours" isn't a bad start - it goes through pretty much everything.

If you need any pointers for anything in particular once you're 'up and running' you'll always find someone helpful here at the codewalkers forums!

If you're programming a message board, you'll probably need a database too - MySQL is very fast and integrates very well with PHP

Good luck!

You can make it through a book. After you get some sort of idea about the language, it is a good idea to go through some good tutorials.

You can have a look @ codewalkers tutorials... may be really handsome for you!

The big question is why do you need to program a message board? Why not just use one of the many that are already made and work wonderfully?

Yep it's true what Matt is saying... If you do not know anything about these languages, how can you be in a position to programme a message board?

Thankyou so much. And why do I have to do it? School IT lessons and for some reason my teacher thinks I can program. It's a bit late to say anything now so...Eek. But thanks again. Surely it can't be _too_ hard...

To write a basic message board isn't that difficult. It is writing a fully robust one where the difficulty comes in. Check out these tutorials for help:

http://php.resourceindex.com/Documentation/Examples_and_Tutorials/Bulletin_Board_Message_Systems/

http://www.hotscripts.com/cgi-bin/dload.cgi?ID=3141

back off the forum idea, i think books are a good way to start then to move onto web articles/tutorials. Well thats how i learnt, another good thing is to read alot of peoples posts on this forum because you can learn from their mistakes