Perhaps because this book was written by two authors, instead of one, there is some inconsistency in use of language throughout the book. It could have used a good, thorough, professional edit for fluency before going to press.

Also, in my opinion, the coding conventions as outlined in the book present a poor example for readers to follow.

"Building Your Own Database-Driven Website Using PHP & MySQL" by Kevin Yank retains its top spot in my library when it comes to these two technologies. Too bad that book is only available directly through it's publisher (try doing a Google search for it).

After reading this book for at least 6 months now I can recommend this book with 5 stars, two thumbs up, and a pat on the back. What is also helpful is the book comes with a CD rom containing the example scripts layed out in the book. Very helpful if you don't understand what the book is getting at and you need some hands on experience.

For example, the Mailing List Manager script has helped me tenfold in setting up a bulletproof newsletter script. I use it for myself, clients, and friends who need a lean script with a MySQL backend and easy to maintain lists. Best of all, it is easy to use and update for people who know nothing about coding and site design.

So in final word, get this book. If you are a beginner or expert PHP developer, it is a helpful reference.

This book demonstrates how well. It starts out with a quick course in PHP (OK, 160 pages is hardly quick but it seems to move along at a good pace), follows it up with a brief look at MySQL before a short digression on E-commerce leads into building authentication and secure systems with the two tools (a marvellous place to start when you're thinking about commercial-grade web systems.)

After some more advanced PHP the book then goes on to give marvellous examples of web applications, a shopping cart, content management system, email service, mailing list manager and web forums. Finally it has a good chapter on generating PDF files using PHP.

Overall the book is well written, well structured and can take someone with some programming knowledge and no experience with PHP and MySQL all the way to the development of full scale database backed web applications.

That's not to say that the book doesn't have some shortcomings. You will want to have some program design experience and preferably some experience with database design as these are given short shrift. The book also lacks examples and discussion of some of the less database intensive parts of PHP and some of the more obscure taks you may need to perform. However it does provide an excellent introduction to these two products for someone, like myself, who already has some experience. It must also be added that there are some typographical errors in some of the code examples, not too many and not too serious but in this day and age why can't authors cut and paste from running and debugged code, Kernighan and Plauger managed it more than twenty years ago in "Software Tools."

I would recommend purchasing this book and "PHP Developer's Cookbook" for the perfect PHP bookshelf. If you wish a fuller understanding of MySQL and database design then add "MySQL" by Paul DuBois and Michael Widenius.

I rate it as four stars rather than five, only because it is not perfect and so many others have given it five.