PHP for Absolute Beginners

by Jason Lengstorf, Thomas Blom Hansen

PHP is a server-side scripting language that enables you to develop dynamic sites that engage users in ways that are simply not possible using only HTML and CSS. PHP for Absolute Beginners takes a practical approach to teaching you how to build dynamic content for your website using PHP. You’ll quickly get started with practical PHP projects, learning how to build a dynamic image gallery. By the end of the book you’ll will have developed a personal blog complete with a password protected admin module.

PHP for Absolute Beginners won't swamp you with every detail of the full PHP language up front – instead, you’ll be introduced to a small, versatile subset of PHP and learn to use it creatively to develop dynamic web sites. In the process you will learn to use variables, control structures, functions, and objects to your advantage. You will learn how to plan and create databases and how to organize your PHP scripts beautifully. At the end of the book, you will be a confident PHP user, ready to take the next steps in creating great websites.

Genres: Programming, Technology

384 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 15, 2009

Reviews

[Mohamed Abdelwahab · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part 1
1- Setting up PHP Development Environment
Apache - MySQL - PHP
XAMPP
Eclipse or NetBeans
2- Language Basics
DataTypes- Vaiables - Commenting - Operators - Control Structure - Functions
3 - Passing Information
$GLOBALS - $_SERVER - $_GET -$_REQUEST - $_POST - $_FILES - $_SESSION - $_COOKIE
4- DataBase
MySQL - Open and close connection - Mysqli -PDO

Part 2
Building Blog Entry Manager with multiple pages and upload images Then add RSS Feed then adding commenting system
Make login and register to Blog and adding validation

[Dony · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a good book for setting up the development environment and basic language principles of PHP but beyond that it seems you are constantly coming up against errors in the code and thrown comparatively advanced concepts which aren't explained or delved upon.

If the errors in this book weren't there then the rest of the details could be easily looked up elsewhere online, or other books. But even then this is supposed to be THE starting point in the series for learning PHP/MySQL development.

I intended to complete this and move up the ranks, but considering what I've just mentioned I wouldn't feel confident about moving to more advanced levels or whether they would be prone to the same deficiencies as this one.

[Ainars · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before reading this book I did not know anything about PHP but I did know some programming that is probably the reason why I found it that good.

Things I really enjoyed in this book:
*Theory viewed in practical terms
*A lot of examples for easy PHP pages
*Explained in simple language (subjective)
*A little bit of CSS and JavaScript for spicing things up
*Many example ideas
Things I did not like:
*Not enough explanation behind Object oriented concepts early in the book, puts off many new readers

All in all this is not a book for beginners, but a good book if you already know some programming and just want to try out PHP.

[Amade · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up this book to get some basics of PHP to better manage my WordPress websites. Having read it, I am able to tackle any PHP-related issue with my WordPress theme, so it definitely worked for me on this end.
It has also quite nice 'bonus content' - it doesn't concentrate solely on PHP, but also web development in general. I had some questions on web development for years, which I didn't know how to ask, where to ask and who to ask. It answered most of them.
I highly recommend this book to anyone with some amateur experience in web development (e.g. managing WP websites and dabbling in theme files) that wants to take their skills and understanding to the next level.