Rating: 
Summary: A PHP Book for Beginners
Review: The book covers elementary knowledge about PHP and a bit of intermediate level. It doesn't assume you to know anything about Web programming although you must understand a bit about HTML. It's a good book if you want to learn PHP from the very basic. It's not a book for you if you want to learn how to make an electronic application using PHP, though. The lessons are described in details with pictures accompanying them.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Guide, gets you going REALLY FAST
Review: The problem with a lot of programming books is that it takes forever to get to the actual programming. This book is the polar opposite of that...the author gets you up and running almost instantly. This book is loaded with examples and example code, and is a great hands-on guide to get up and running with PHP in a very short amount of time.
Rating:
Summary: Excelent for Beginners
Review: This book is absolutely perfect for beginners. If Like me you have no experience of programming, but would like to learn, buy this book, you'll be a programmer within two days!.
Rating:
Summary: grrrrrrrrreat!
Review: This book is great for those new to PHP. I came in with only a little knowledge of HTML, and came out with the basics of PHP + better HTML skills. If you want to learn PHP's basics fast before you use a more complex book, this should be your choice. Its cheap, and a great learning utility along with reference. I recommend it for everyone who wants to learn PHP with close to no knowledge of any other languages.
Rating:
Summary: grrrrrrrrreat!
Review: This book is great for those new to PHP. I came in with only a little knowledge of HTML, and came out with the basics of PHP + better HTML skills. If you want to learn PHP's basics fast before you use a more complex book, this should be your choice. Its cheap, and a great learning utility along with reference. I recommend it for everyone who wants to learn PHP with close to no knowledge of any other languages.
Rating:
Summary: Worth its weight in gold
Review: This book is great.
As a beginner web designer/programmer, i knew some html, some css, and a little javascript. I bought this book because I was working on my first interactive site, and I wanted to write it in php. It was almost as though the author had read my mind, because there was either a page or chapter devoted to almost every single aspect of what I needed to accomplish with my site. The tips and side notes are extremely valuable as well.
I have 2 other 'Quickstart' books from Peachpit Press, and while I found the other 2 mostly 'fluff', this one really is packed with information.
While there are topics that don't cover everything (of course many of these topics could be a book within themselves), the author does a great job of realizing this, and pointing you in the right direction should you need more in-depth information.
The author also has an online forum where he is very good at answering php-related questions, and providing support for the book.
This book constantly sits about 3 feet away from my computer as a constant reference, and I can't think of anything I've ever spent less than $20 on that was as valuable as this.
Rating:
Summary: Great Way to Get Started
Review: This book is very easy to use. It's organized so that you can go right to the stuff you need. Some of the examples continue from previous chapters but they are clear enough that you can apply them to your needs at any point. The companion website it amazing. The author moderates a forum where he and other knowledgable PHP'ers respond with useful, thoughtful suggestions very quickly. Some of the code is outdated because of new releases of PHP, but that's the nature of the topic. The website identifies many of the most important changes, and how to modify your scripts to work with newer releases. I'm glad I bought it when I did, but the author has since come out with "PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Web Sites." I'd probably buy that instead since I'm also trying to learn mySQL.
Rating:
Summary: Short and to the point.
Review: This book quickly got me to the point that I felt comfortable experimenting on my own. I have been doing VB and C programming for several years, having little web programming experience. This book was perfect to help me get familiar with the syntax and concepts of PHP and start putting up data-driven pages. The only specific problem I had with the code samples was that by default register_globals was set to off in the php.ini file of PHP4. I believe this caused a minor problem for one of the form handling examples.
Rating:
Summary: Short and to the point.
Review: This book quickly got me to the point that I felt comfortable experimenting on my own. I have been doing VB and C programming for several years, having little web programming experience. This book was perfect to help me get familiar with the syntax and concepts of PHP and start putting up data-driven pages. The only specific problem I had with the code samples was that by default register_globals was set to off in the php.ini file of PHP4. I believe this caused a minor problem for one of the form handling examples.
Rating:
Summary: A quickstart for beginners AND intermediates.
Review: This book was easy to read and learn from. The author not only shows you what to do, but WHY you should do it. I had some previous background in programming other languages and this book moved along quick enough where I, as an intermediate, didn't get bored, yet I could see that a beginner was given enough information to keep up and understand everything too. It was a perfect balance. I now feel confident in my PHP skills and could for sure start making extensive sites by combining all of the topics covered in the book. I can also see that this book will be a great reference in the future as the index worked great as I was learning and referring back to sections.
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