Start programming PHP and make your Web site interactive Discover arrays of variables, start writing scripts, and get object oriented The script calls for an interactive Web site where do you start? Right here, with a fast and friendly way to get the hang of PHP 5 programming! You ll also discover all the other cool things you can do with PHP, like managing files, interacting with databases, using system commands, and more. The Dummies Way Explanations in plain English "Get in, get out" information Icons and other navigational aids Tear-out cheat sheet Top ten lists A dash of humor and fun

Covers the latest major release of PHP, the most popular open source Web scripting language, in the friendly, easy-to-understand For Dummies style

• PHP is installed on nearly nine million servers, and usage has grown at the rate of 6.5 percent per month for the past two years
• PHP is easy to learn, well suited for Web development, and can be embedded with HTML, making it a good choice for creating dynamic Web pages for e-commerce sites and other Web applications; a database-friendly language, it connects easily to Sybase, MySQL, mSQL, Oracle, and other databases
• Explains how to acquire and install PHP, how PHP’s features make it a useful scripting language, and how to use PHP for three of the most common applications: interactive Web sites, database storage, and common operating system tasks

very good work
This book is a very well prepared for its purpose and target readers... This is for the beginners and guides you through to intermadiete level in PHP. If you have some background in PHP, then I would suggest other works for intermediate and advanced coders.

There are some printing errors that corrected by the author at her web site.. www.janet.valade.com/php5errors.html Please do not forget to go there to print the table out, so you can keep with the book.

Good for beginner ****
It is a beginners book and will help explain the basics of PHP, which will help either a beginner or experienced programmer to get a quick understanding of PHP. Typos with underscores, where it should have been single or double quotes, yes, typos should have be caught before printing, but not a big deal, once you figured that out, it’s not a problem anymore. It is still a good book for someone starting on PHP, fairly easy to grasp, but then I used to program a lot in VB, so it makes it easier to understand structures, functions, loops, etc., just have to simply get used to the way PHP wants you to do it. I would have rated it a 5, but the typo killed 1/2 a star and Amazon only allows rating whole number increment/decrement. Especially if you never programmed before and wanting to learn PHP, I would give this a thumbs up. In a way, the typos inadvertently can be a good thing, since they will cause errors, makes you use your brain to try and figure out what the problems are, that is what programming is all about, creating and solving puzzles.

If it was not for the numerous typos...
I would’ve given this a 4. Because of the amount of typos, give it a 3 instead. Good for beginners.

Overall, very basic for beginners and explained in somewhat laymen term. Some may say that PHP is designed for non programmers, but for those who never used any programming languages before, trying to grasp the meaning of an array, multi dimensional array, different types of loops, functions, class, regular expression, blah blah blah, can be a brain twister still.

The author should not be rating their own book a 5 star, especially with the amount of typos and should not be justifying those errors. Before printing, those simple code snippets should’ve be tested, you could have easily caught the typos and corrected most of them.

If it was not for the numerous typos...
I would’ve given this a 4. But, because of the amount of typos, give it a 3 instead. Good for beginners.

Overall, very basic for beginners and explained in somewhat laymen term. Some may say that PHP is designed for non programmers, but for those who never used any programming languages before, trying to grasp the meaning of an array, multi dimensional array, different types of loops, functions, objects(their properties and methods), regular expression, blah blah blah, can be a brain twister still. However, if you have an editor/debugger (I use the Komodo IDE), it’ll make learning MUCH easier. Don’t let the brain twister part discourage you though, it’s just a fact. But, once you start reading and writing codes, especially with the help of an editor/debugger, so that you can step in and watch line by line, to see what each line of statement and the variables are doing, things will fall into place. I used to program in VB, so I mainly read this book to learn the basics of how PHP syntax & structure work, the rest would be a lot easier(should’ve done this YEARS ago).

An author should not be rating their own book a 5 star, especially with the amount of typos and definitely should not be justifying those typos. Before printing, those simple code snippets should’ve be tested, where they could have easily been caught and corrected.

The errors make this "how to" book somewhat useless
I have to repeat what others have said. This being a programming book, it is inexcusable to have _ when the programming language wants a "

Terrible experience trying to learn a programming language when several symbols are just plain wrong in the text. What’s the point? I’m paying money to waste my time figuring out typos in a programming language I do not know.

So why did I give my money? Never again. The publisher should be recalling this book but they haven’t done so.

Other then this tremendously horrid mistake which is throughout the book there is some good information. There is also a lot of senseless rambling. The author goes on and on about PHP numerical functions. All she had to say was you can perform calculations and a few examples. Her rambling text is painfully dry. Maybe she should have spent more time proofreading rather then the obvious page filling.

I’m angry that I had to translate code I’m trying to learn. Maybe the author and publisher should be paying me to teach them. Refund please.

There are better choices out there
I only give this two stars because there are a few snippets of code that are worth absorbing. However this book has enough errors to make the subject matter confusing. I’ve used quite a few "Dummies" books as intros to a variety of subjects in my 20 years of programming. They have for the most part been quite helpful.

I always expect some errors from books dealing with technical material, but the errors here are of a nature so as to cause confusion, especially to those new to PHP.

My bottom line recommendation is not to use this book if you are new to programming or to PHP. You’ll spend more time than warranted separating the wheat from the chaff. There are much better intros to be had. Try Sam’s "PHP, MySQL and Apache" or Sitepoint’s "Object Oriented PHP Solutions". Both are accurate, easy to understand, and have code samples that are easy to get to.

Yes, the author reads the reviews.
Yes, the author reads the reviews here. That’s me. The error in which a few quotes were replaced with underscores occurred during the publishing process, after I was finished with the book. I didn’t know about the errors until I saw the earlier review here. However, there is no way to fix it. If the book is reprinted or a second edition is released, I can fix the errors, but not until then. I wish I could. I apologize to any who were confused by this problem.

There are 8 quotes replaced with underscores on 4 lines in Chapter 3, 2 quotes replaced with underscores on 1 line in Chapter 4, and 20 quotes replaced with underscores on 8 lines in Chapter 5. I have a list of the errors and corrections on my web site at janet.valade.com/php5errors.html.

Editor must have been on vacation!!!
Although I am learning a lot from this book, I am frustrated by the number of typo’s. I finally figured out that when you see an underscore, it might really be a single or double quote...
Now, I need to go back and make sure if an underscore ever really means underscore...
Does the author of these books ever read these reviews???

Unquestionably the best book to start with.
The samples are very well described, easy to understand (it IS for dummies) and they are about the most common use of PHP. There is a web site with the source code of every sample.

Numerous errors in the book and it starts out confusing
I got the book today and found it uses some weird syntax. For example the author uses echo_ instead of echo, etc. This happens numerous times in the book.

I also wouldn’t call this book for people who have no knowledge of php. This does not introduce the basic concepts of the language well like for example the tags in php. All the author says is thats how scripts start. Other books gave me paragraphs why they have those tags. This book though is good for a beginner but has had some experience with the language.

Just Getting Started
I like the Dummies books.

OK, so I’m not sophisticated, professional, or even very smart. But so many computer books seem to forget the first twenty pages that explain just what the hell you are trying to do. Perhaps the Dummies books take 40 pages to explain what could have been donw in 20, but that’s not a problem. I can read fast.

It has often happened that I first read a Dummies book and then once I’m deep into doing something with that language I need to go get a more complete Bible type book. I haven’t gotten far enough into PHP yet to know if this is true, but in moving a web site over to Unix (BSD), Postgre, Apache, and PHP; I don’t have the time to read a Bible on each one of these. This book, along with some other Dummies books is getting me started a lot faster than I thought possible.