Do you understand programming logic even a little bit? Try this. Think of a program you want to write. Not too complicated, but not as simple as printing "Hello World" to the screen either. Write it in english, as close to how the programming logic might go. Next, see if you can translate your pseudocode into php code using
www.php.net
A good place to start is here, looking at string functions.
http://us2.php.net/manual/en/ref.strings.php