first of all, i should say i am currently studying software engineering in university and i do understand the OOP principle (is this called 'paradigm'?). we had Java and C/C++ and basically it was mainly OO programming. as you have probably guessed, i mainly did pretty simple tasks which included declaring classes and using objects with their methods. now there i do understand: you have a class, and you can create multiple objects different in some ways but of the same class (for example painting circles of different radius on the screen). i also understand polymorphism, encapsulation terms as well as OOP advantage of testing.
having tried purely procedural code in php, i now wonder how and why i could/should use classes in pretty simple ('everyday') websites the most sophisticated elements of which could be online registration, newsletter management and a product db? i have read an example of OOP with PHP which presented a use of a class to display fixed amount of records per page. well yeah, it's nice, but... couldn't i do the same with simple functions and include them where needed? i mean, why would i want a class with one instance only? for me it's a bit difficult to grasp where i could have a use of OOP with PHP in rather simple projects.
i would really like to know your opinion on this as well as a few useful examples if possible, as it will help me to get a better idea of how i could use OOP with PHP. the more info you can provide, the better.