This Manual is not intended to be a full programmers quide. If you are completely a beginner in programming, you might not get used to PHP by only reading the Manual. You may consider buying a book with deeper explanation on simple programming tasks. You can find a listing of books at http://www.php.net/books.php. We do not recommend you to buy a reprint of the PHP Manual, because these are commonly quite outdated. Consider that the PHP manual is changing from day to day.
If you think someone already faced the exact problem and you are stuggling, you can ask your questions on one of our popular mailing lists. There are plenty of them grouped by subject. You may receive an answer for your question in minutes in the busiest hours. You can subscribe to one mailing list at http://www.php.net/support.php. You can also find IRC channels linked on this page in the left bar.
If you are not fan of mail discussions, you can also find many community sites listed on our links page at http://www.php.net/links.php.