Rating: 
Summary: Excellent book - poor publishing (1st & 2nd edition)
Review: * Note: I refer here to both the first and second edition *This is the book I purchased to get started on server-side scripting; it probably says "user-level intermediate-advanced" to avoid lawsuits; I had no prior knowledge of server-side programming, and no trouble understanding. It is divided in four logical parts:
(1) PHP tutorial
(2) MySQL tutorial
(3) General discussion on server-side scripting & e-commerce (very interesting)
(4) Projects This book does an excellent job at explaining PHP & MySQL to the beginner, and goes much beyond the frustrating "intermediate" level where similar books often stop. It assumes a working knowledge of HTML, which everyone interested in this book already has in all likelihood. It is cleverly written, clear and concise. The authors share their extensive experience with the reader, notably in the third part where common pitfalls are discussed. The index is well done, which makes this book an excellent desktop reference in addition to being a good tutorial. The CD contains all the code for the examples, the complete book in searchable PDF, and other goodies like the Apache Server and PHP. My recommendation: go to phpide.de and download PHPTriad to install & configure Apache/PHP/MySQL on your PC, or have someone knowledgeable do it manually for you to avoid headaches. The only reason I can't give five stars to the first or second edition is the number of mistakes/typos in the code examples. The upload code doesn't work, PDF generation uses obsolete functions even in the second edition, etc. Although most of the code supplied as example functions properly, it is annoying to know that a book written to teach you to program contains errors in the programming examples. The second edition adds a chapter about XML and removes outdated URLs. Otherwise, it is the same book (including code typos). Combined with the PHP & MySQL manuals available for download from their respective sites, allow a week or two of reading and you should have everything needed to start working. All things considered, I strongly recommend this book. PS: if your heart balances between ASP & PHP for server-side, consider that more servers are PHP-enabled, since it is cheaper (free).
If you want to stay in known terrain and use JScript, than go for ASP.
Rating: 
Summary: great book!!
Review: I really looked around before buying a php/mysql book, and bought this one based on: Amazon reviews! I have to say, it was a great book! For someone who knows nothing about either, but wants to jump right in working on web sites with php and mysql, this is the perfect book! It's well organized, it's easy to understand, and the examples are very useful and straightforward. I really recommend this book to anyone interested in php/mysql web development!
Rating: 
Summary: Don't waste your money
Review: The more pages that a computer book has the less value it seems to have and this book is no exception. The authors try to cover too many topics and as a result almost nothing is covered adequately. I've had problems making sessions work properly and the chapter on sessions was of absolutely no help. You can find better information on the Internet. To be fair, I did get a couple of ideas from this book that I've used in my web design. The most positive thing that I can say is that I'm very grateful that I got the book from the library rather than buying it.
Rating: 
Summary: good book
Review: PHP and MySQL web development is a good book that covers many aspecs of PHP and MySQL in simple, easy to understand instructions. But the reality is, that PHP is a scripting laguage with limits, and ASP.NET is taking over!
Rating:
Summary: Not really good
Review: This book does not contain a complete information about php and mySQL, it's just talking about the e-commerce thing.
Rating:
Summary: Great book!
Review: I picked this book up as a total PHP beginner and was creating useful applications quickly. The examples are excellent and walk you through processes step by step. Now that I know more about PHP from different sources I can see that there are some gaps in information in this book, but I'd definitely recommend it to beginners. It helps if you've already done a little scripting. Just one thing: why is this edition more expensive than the new second edition???
Rating:
Summary: Decent book for beginners
Review: This book has some great examples on how to utilize PHP along with MySQL but I thought that the book included too much information on setting up MySQL queries and not enough on the intricacies of PHP. PHP is a very interesting language and although this book provides a good framework with which you could use as a launching pad into the web development arena, there are many issues which are not addressed in this book adequately. Nevertheless, it is good buy if you're looking for something which will get you started on the right foot with web development.
Rating:
Summary: Great
Review: If you want to learn PHP this is the book you must have.
Rating:
Summary: not much about MySQL, but very useful sample projects
Review: This book should not have "MySQL" in the title because it has very little emphasis on database design and programming. I bought because I thought it would discuss both PHP and MySQL equally, but its database discussion is cursory. It doesn't even discuss normalization. So I was initially very disappointed with the book. But now that my expectations have been adjusted (and I have purchased other books that talk specifically about MySQL), I now appreciate the book for what it does offer. The best part of this book is the advanced projects in the back. These are not just toys, but skeletons of real world systems. By adapting the examples in Chapters 24 and 25, I was able to build a very nice shopping cart with authentication for a real-world Web site. One nit... The authors' programming style drives me NUTS. It's modular to the point of insanity. I know some people like this way of doing things, but to me it's spaghetti code. They split things into zillions of different functions in zillions of different files. Many of the functions are one-liners. So to figure out how something works, you have to hunt through file upon file to find the real code. I had to read the sample code with a GREP program handy so when I opened one file to see calls to five other functions, I could find the other functions and then the functions THEY call, etc., etc., etc. Why does anyone think this way of coding is clear?? But this is a style issue. Another style nit... The spacing in the code is weird. Either there are no spaces at all (e.g. xxx&&yyy) or everything is spaced evenly with no grouping (e.g. type = text name = Foo). Either way, it's hard to read. I found a few coding errors, but this is to be expected in a project so large. Except for the style issues, the code was mostly good. Despite its drawbacks, on the whole I've found the book very useful--mainly for the example projects in the back. I apparently bought this book weeks before the second edition was released. ::sigh::
Rating:
Summary: Confusing and Incomplete.
Review: This book was hard to follow in places and the code included with the book didn't seem to work half the time. Trying the simple examples given on page 506 (Listing 24.4) I spend good part of an 8 hour work day trying all kinds of things to make that simple script to work, but to no avail. I eliminated the if statement, the only code in the example, and it worked. This experience and the haphazard presentation and confusing explanations of the examples that followed I gave up on using the code in this book and found alternative examples elsewhere. On a positive note this book has a good introduction to SQL functions.
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