Customer Rating: 
Summary: Excellent PHP/MySQL book!
Comment: Firstly, I'm not some programmer with a Ph.D. in Software Engineering or a guru who's been using Unix for 20 years. When I got this book I knew some C++ (learned some in IT/Computer Science classes in high-school) and a fair amount of HTML. This book was, and still is, the perfect level for me (if you don't know any real programming yet, but are an advanced computer user, you won't have any problems though).The book is well structured and coherent. It's not something where one will just flip through and maybe learn something near here and there. It starts at the basics and then covers more and more advanced material. Everything is very well explained - I hardly ever had to re-read any sections - I nearly always understood the things after reading through the chapters. And no, I'm not genius. ;) This book doesn't just tell you about all the basic PHP functions, MySQL basics and how to use them both together. Only about a third of the book is on that. The main part of the book deals with real-world applications - E-commerce is the focus of this book, but Part V of the book (Building Practical PHP and MySQL Projects) also covers designing/programming other projects such as a forum or a Email service (yes, you'll learn to make something like Hotmail). Don't think that you will only be able to make E-commerce sites after reading this book - I presonally don't make any E-commerce sites as of yet, yet I have learned extremely much from this book, and I am only about half-way through. Frankly, this book rocks for PHP beginners and intermediates. This book is even sort of fun to read if you're a bit of a geek who's motivated to learn, I guess. I love this book! :) My only complaint: Since version 4.2.x of PHP, global variables are set to 'off' by default. This basically means that one needs to code one's scripts in a slightly different way when one posts/gets variables, uses cookies or uses sessions (you will definitely use this stuff when you get into slightly more advanaced PHP applications). It is easy to code in the new way, but one will probably need a bit of outside help. This isn't the book's fault though, so it still deserves 5/5 stars, in my humble opinion. I'm sure the next edition (if a second one will be published) will clear this up.
Customer Rating:
Summary: wunderbar
Comment: this book rocks the casbah - i went from 0 to a fully ecommerce enabled, automated content, crazy reporting screens and all sorts of other database driven geegawmatic things in about a month. i owe it all to this book. in a tough economy, i still have my job and this book has a lot to do with it. between this and sitepointforums.com you'll be able to get to an advanced level with php in way less time than you'd probably expect.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fantastic way to learn PHP from the bottom up!
Comment: This book was designed with a beginner in mind. You can literally pick it up and get started. Although the "crash course" offered at the beginning is a little intimidating, upon reading into it and doing some of the exercises it all becomes do-able. One of the things I really like about this book is that it has ongoing exercises in it. Starting in chapter 1, you begin to design a website for a fictitious company, and through the next chapters you continue it's development, applying the new skills you've learned. This method (as opposed to doing little isolated exercises that don't give a comprehensive approach) was an easy way to apply new skills and really helped things stick. I did have some prior experience (although not much!) in programming Perl. This would definately be helpful, but it is most certainly not a requirement to learn PHP with this book. If you're not a very advanced programmer and are looking for an easy way to get started with PHP and online database processing, then this book is definately a solid choice .
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fantastic way to learn PHP from the bottom up!
Comment: This book was designed with a beginner in mind. You can literally pick it up and get started. Although the "crash course" offered at the beginning is a little intimidating, upon reading into it and doing some of the exercises it all becomes do-able. One of the things I really like about this book is that it has ongoing exercises in it. Starting in chapter 1, you begin to design a website for a fictitious company, and through the next chapters you continue it's development, applying the new skills you've learned. This method (as opposed to doing little isolated exercises that don't give a comprehensive approach) was an easy way to apply new skills and really helped things stick. I did have some prior experience (although not much!) in programming Perl. This would definately be helpful, but it is most certainly not a requirement to learn PHP with this book. If you're not a very advanced programmer and are looking for an easy way to get started with PHP and online database processing, then this book is definately a solid choice .
Customer Rating:
Summary: PHP, MySQL, and More
Comment: I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking to get into using PHP and MySQL.
After reading the first five chapters I already felt I had gotten my money's worth. Not only did I learn the things I needed to know about PHP and MySQL quickly and easily, but I learned more.
In college I took a class in Java Programming for the Iternet. A lot of it went right over my head at the time. After reading this book, I actually began to understand Java Programming also (thanks to the chapter on Object-Oriented PHP).
I highly recommend this book to people just starting out in the world of programming, databases, and web scripting. I would also highly recommend it to people coming in with a lot of experience in other programming languages. Welling and Thomson somehow find that very delicate balance between satisfying the needs of 'newbies' and programming veterans alike.
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