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Learning PHP

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

Learning PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript: A Step-By-Step Guide to Creating Dynamic Websites (Animal Guide)If you know HTML, this guide will have you building interactive websites quickly. You'll learn how to create responsive, data-driven websites with PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript, regardless of whether you already know how to program. Discover how the powerful combination of PHP and MySQL provides an easy way to build modern websites complete with dynamic data and user interaction. You'll also learn how to add JavaScript to create rich Internet applications and websites.

Learning PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript explains each technology separately, shows you how to combine them, and introduces valuable web programming concepts, including objects, XHTML, cookies, and session management. You'll practice what you've learned with review questions in each chapter, and find a sample social networking platform built with the elements introduced in this book.

This book will help you:

Understand PHP essentials and the basics of object-oriented programming
Master MySQL, from database structure to complex queries
Create web pages with PHP and MySQL by integrating forms and other HTML features
Learn about JavaScript, from functions and event handling to accessing the Document Object Model
Use libraries and packages, including the Smarty web template system, PEAR program repository, and the Yahoo! User Interface Library
Make Ajax calls and turn your website into a highly dynamic environment
Upload and manipulate files and images, validate user input, and secure your applications

PHP Solutions: Dynamic Web Design Made EasyThis is the second edition of David Power's highly-respected PHP Solutions: Dynamic Web Design Made Easy. This new edition has been updated by David to incorporate changes to PHP since the first edition and to offer the latest techniques--a classic guide modernized for 21st century PHP techniques, innovations, and best practices.

You want to make your websites more dynamic by adding a feedback form, creating a private area where members can upload images that are automatically resized, or perhaps storing all your content in a database. The problem is, you're not a programmer and the thought of writing code sends a chill up your spine. Or maybe you've dabbled a bit in PHP and MySQL, but you can't get past baby steps. If this describes you, then you've just found the right book. PHP and the MySQL database are deservedly the most popular combination for creating dynamic websites. They're free, easy to use, and provided by many web hosting companies in their standard packages.

Unfortunately, most PHP books either expect you to be an expert already or force you to go through endless exercises of little practical value. In contrast, this book gives you real value right away through a series of practical examples that you can incorporate directly into your sites, optimizing performance and adding functionality such as file uploading, email feedback forms, image galleries, content management systems, and much more. Each solution is created with not only functionality in mind, but also visual design.

But this book doesn't just provide a collection of ready-made scripts: each PHP Solution builds on what's gone before, teaching you the basics of PHP and database design quickly and painlessly. By the end of the book, you'll have the confidence to start writing your own scripts or--if you prefer to leave that task to others--to adapt existing scripts to your own requirements. Right from the start, you're shown how easy it is to protect your sites by adopting secure coding practices.

PHP and MySQL Web Development (4th Edition)PHP and MySQL are popular open-source technologies that are ideal for quickly developing database-driven Web applications. PHP is a powerful scripting language designed to enable developers to create highly featured Web applications quickly, and MySQL is a fast, reliable database that integrates well with PHP and is suited for dynamic Internet-based applications.

PHP and MySQL Web Development shows how to use these tools together to produce effective, interactive Web applications. It clearly describes the basics of the PHP language, explains how to set up and work with a MySQL database, and then shows how to use PHP to interact with the database and the server.

This practical, hands-on book includes numerous examples that demonstrate common tasks such as authenticating users, constructing a shopping cart, generating PDF documents and images dynamically, sending and managing email, facilitating user discussions, connecting to Web services using XML, and developing Web 2.0 applications with Ajax-based interactivity.

The fourth edition of PHP and MySQL Web Development has been thoroughly updated, revised, and expanded to cover developments in PHP 5 through version 5.3, such as namespaces and closures, as well as features introduced in MySQL 5.1.