While there is really no substitute for experience, you cannot really join the fray without some tools to help you on your way. This appendix has shown you how to deal with a few of the more common and simpler errors, which occur reasonably often. Following this, a good process for dealing with more complex problems was outlined by way of example using the feed page code, which was created in the professional version of this book.

From this you have learned to gather information and analyze a problem before diving into the code. Once you have established what you expect the code to do (make sure you understand enough to have the correct expectations), you can go about determining possible causes. As well as this, you learned a few tricks for helping illuminate the program’s execution so that you provide yourself with important debugging information.

Remember that many development environments provide all sorts of features that can make your life easier—if you find that you don’t have time to invest in doing things manually, then using one of the PHP IDEs on the market is certainly a worthwhile alternative.