How can PHP beginners effectively utilize the PHP manual to understand date functions?

PHP beginners can effectively utilize the PHP manual to understand date functions by searching for specific functions like date() or strtotime() and reading the detailed explanations, examples, and user-contributed notes. By studying the manual entries, beginners can learn about the parameters, return values, and usage of each date function.

// Example code snippet demonstrating the use of date() function
$date = date('Y-m-d H:i:s');
echo $date;