Where can an absolute beginner of Kohana PHP go to learn how to use it from the ground up?

I have a month of free time and I've decided to launch my own website. It's going to be big and have dymanic content where different users with different roles can perform modifications to the site. Place comments, rate stores, list items, etc.

This sound like a perfect opportunity for me to expand my horizons and learn a PHP Framework.

I've used PHP bare bones before but nothing too complex.

As of now, do you think Kohana is a mature framework to use? I've used Zend in the past fo开发者_StackOverflow社区r a course in Uni but it sucked horribly, I was new to the MVC model, but Zend had pretty much zero workable tutorials and guides for newbies. That's why I hated it.

Where can I go to learn how to use Kohana from a retarded starting point?

Thank you very much for your time.

Edit: While documentation is nice, it's not really what I'm looking for. I learn much quicker when there is a step by step guide on how to build a functioning website example, with theory pasted as side text to what is being done in that step.

Is there anything like that in existance?

If you're going the Kohana 3.0 route there's an unofficial wiki with examples and the official documentation.

The official documentation is currently a work in progress, while the wiki has links to tutorials and explains how to start with kohana.

I would checkout the repository and browse the website source; it's an excellent resource of examples.

Other than that, if you want to know how to use something, look at the source for the helper/library/core file in question. Source code is the best instructor.

(this is coming from a dev)

I am currently working on a site which went from Kohana 2.3.4 to Kohana 3.0. I suggest go for version 3. If you have foundations in basic website operations with PHP (image uploads, session management, user authentication, CRUD etc), learning KOhana will be a breeze.

For a fast-paced run-through with the basics, go to this site: http://kerkness.ca/wiki/doku.php

go through that and if you can't understand one or two things from it, search it in the forums.

P.S. Kohana is mature enough for huge projects. But Kohana is just a tool, in the end the website will rely on your skills as a developer. Good luck in using Kohana :)

you will find user guide and reference here.

Also you can find Kohama's community and forums links for here

This could help you in great deal.