Learning PHP

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Recommended books and resources on the topics of PHP coding, website design, WordPress development and more.

If you’re interested in expanding your website development skills or need to start developing specialized functionality on your sites, the PHP programming language is an excellent place to start. The following books are excellent places to start learning.

Books on Learning PHP

Build Your Own Database Driven Web Site Using PHP & MySQLBuild Your own Database Driven Web Site Using PHP & MySQL is a practical hands-on guide to learning all the tools, principles and techniques needed to build a fully functional database-driven web site using PHP & MySQL.

This book covers everything from installing PHP & MySQL under Windows, Linux, and Mac through to building a live web-based content management system.

While this is essentially a beginners book, it also covers more advanced topics such as the storage of binary data in MySQL, and cookies and sessions in PHP. It comes complete with a set of handy reference guides for PHP & MySQL that include:
MySQL syntax MySQL functions MysQL column types PHP functions for working with MySQL

PHP with MySQL Essential TrainingWebsite and database assimilation is a necessity for many of today's businesses, and learning to work with PHP is key to integration success. The objective of PHP with MySQL Essential Training is to teach both new and experienced web developers the comprehensive steps for building dynamic, data-driven, interactive websites. Instructor Kevin Skoglund demonstrates the entire process of building a content management system. He starts with the basics of the PHP language (variables, arrays, loops, functions, etc.) and works up to building dynamic web pages with a MySQL back end. Kevin also covers blueprinting applications; structuring and interacting with databases; building, validating, and processing forms; and regulating user access with passwords. In addition, he provides practical advice, offers examples of best practices, and demonstrates refactoring techniques for improving existing code. Exercise files accompany the tutorials.

Topics Include:

Viewing PHP configuration information
Exploring data types
Understanding logical expressions
Working with loops
Defining and using functions
Building web pages
Creating a database in MySQL
Building a content management system

Duration: 10.75 hours
On 2 CD-ROMs

Build Your Own Database Driven Website Using PHP and MySQL

Build Your Own Database-Driven Website Using PHP & MySQL is a practical guide for first-time users of PHP & MySQL that teaches readers by creating a fully working Content Management System, Shopping Cart and other real-world applications. There has been a marked increase in the adoption of PHP, most notably in the beginning to intermediate levels. PHP now boasts over 30% of the server side scripting market (Source: php.weblogs.com).

The previous edition sold over 17,000 copies exclusively through Sitepoint.com alone. With the release of PHP 5, SitePoint have updated this bestseller to reflect best practice web development using PHP 5 and MySQL 4.

The 3rd Edition includes more code examples and also a new bonus chapter on structured PHP Programming which introduces techniques for organizing real world PHP applications to avoid code duplication and ensure code is manageable and maintainable. The chapter introduces features like include files, user-defined function libraries and constants, which are combined to produce a fully functional access control system suitable for use on any PHP Website.

Beginning PHP 5.3 (Wrox Programmer to Programmer)Serving as a complete introduction to PHP 5.3, this book walks you through all the major concepts of PHP in a way that’s easy to follow, with plenty of code snippets illustrating each concept to aid learning. You’ll discover how to install and configure PHP 5.3, how to get started with simple programs, and the basic building blocks of PHP such as variables, operators, expressions, arrays, and objects. Coverage working with files, XML, and MySQL; building Web applications with PHP; exploring the PEAR library; handling e-mail; and creating Web graphics.