I have just purchased PHP and MySQL Web Development, 3rd Edition
Luke Welling, Laura Thomson, from amazon.co.uk £25.55 it was highly recommended so I took the plunge. I haven't had time to look through it in detail yet, but it looks pretty good :)

i liked the PHP Bible, but remember its kind of reference book, and looking fo r good teaching books, look for the words like

student manual, unleashed(forgot a few more, will post later)

__________________
---------------------------
Errors = Improved Programming.
Portfolio

BY FAR the best book I've read too :D

I've tried reading SitePoint's books, 24 hour books, etc... but I just couldn't really GET INTO those books. The book "PHP and MySQL Web Development" (3rd edition - deals with PHP 5) was really good! I like the fact that they have SEVERAL chapters (complete chapters) building SOLID applications... they might not be the BEST applications you'll build - but they're great for teaching you HOW to do it and WHY you have to do certain things certain ways...

It's the first book, out of over 10 I've purchased, that I've actually READ more than halfway and I even completed that one too!

so I highly recommend it...

Thats good to hear Clenard!

I have just quickly skimmed thro the first chapter, half of it made sense and half of it I got lost but I wasn't going thro any of the tutorial files. I am reading the first chaptor again and I'm picking up more this time :)

Im currently doing the house up so am not 'seriously' reading it yet, just a quickie :)

Hopefully when the house is done can sit down and go through it properly! Agree with you though, its a very well written book!!

Hey Brook!

Good to hear you're going over it again... the reason I say this is - I too used to read books and skim over code, try to understand, etc - but 8 months later of on again, off again reading, watching, etc I was still lost...

For the FIRST time ever dealing with PHP, I actually started coding along with the Examples and reading the comments (// commented lines) and then viewed the Examples, reasoning they gave throughout the book... I have to tell you - THIS is what really makes the book so excellent. Not only do they have more than ONE example to build out - they have MANY examples that are all based upon the most popular scripts people use online.

I hope you keep it up - you'll be very happy you did! :)

Yep I will keep it up and intend to hit the book full force when the house is decorated and I have my office back!! :lol:

I think I may even take a week off work and dedicate it to the book :)

Just out of interest, did you know any programming b4 u started to learn PHP? how long did it take u to learn? any other tips? :)

No, the only thing I've ever done (have experience with) before PHP was HTML and CSS, which is not programming at all.

PHP was like learning Chinese and Japanese at once to me. I never got the hang of it for about 8 months while trying to stay focused on it - which was hard to do... the reason it took so long was that I was trying to learn something by reading and not doing. That's why I say "follow the examples" and understand every line of code they give you throughout the book... it takes a little longer - but you'll actually be able to code after a few days :) now, it won't be like "hey, 2 days later I built something similar to Mambo" - but you'll actually know what you're doing :)

A problem I seem to have is memorizing little things... like - I know how things work, why they work, etc. -> but I'll be skimming through someone elses code and see define('SOMETHING', 1); and try to remember exactly what it's all for lol - but that's why I check the indexes on the book... or go to sites like this that aren't filled up with 1,000,000 threads running on a 3 year old version of vBulletin that takes 5 minutes to search and gives you 999,000 threads to search through lol...

Sorry... rambling.................

but if you feel that Video's (as in Learn by watching - like I prefer as well) may help you as well - you could check out www.VTC.com for their "Online University" for $30.00 a month - learn from their PHP video's and their MySQL video set as well. Use this site to ask simple questions - get quick answers and keep going. :)

I actually started with VTC's videos and I've watched them several times in the past to grasp Basic PHP - and they help alot! They're not boring like alot of the other tutorials out there either (except for PHP Projects by VTC - it's very boring). You learn how to build basic forums by the end of the video's. The MySQL video's are EXCELLENT though, I highly suggest those!

No matter what, keep reading one book and finish it up all the way or you'll never fully understand PHP - because you'll leave off at important parts just to see what's "more exciting" out there...

KEEP READING! :D

Also as a side note, hope getting errors in your programming.
weird, yes, but no errors then you missed something. dont panic on errors (as its usual for newbies, same as for me might be more than you), just go along with them. you'll get a lot from errors, safe and secure coding comes from errors.

__________________
---------------------------
Errors = Improved Programming.
Portfolio

I agree... when I first started trying my own code for my own projects I always started to panic because I had errors on everything - but after understanding the differences in Error types (e.g. Parse, Logic, etc) I learned alot more! Not only that - but I can fix errors in a matter of minutes in most cases :)

yes, i can say that too, clenard. my strong point is debugging

__________________
---------------------------
Errors = Improved Programming.
Portfolio

ok whats the difference? "Error types (e.g. Parse, Logic, etc)" *grin*

thanks for the advice - I will surely be doing my best to go thro it and will reread chaptors untill I feel I have picked up enough out of them :)