Learning PHP
I have been creating websites and using HTML since the early days of HTML. The coolest things we were doing back then were using tags to create breaks in the pages or adding an animated gif. Things have obvisously come a long way since then. Since those days I have played with a couple of programming languages including Perl, but I never really stayed with any of them. Last year I decided that I would try my hand at PHP as so many people were saying how easy it is to use. I picked up a PHP/MySQL book and after following the examples and spending a couple of hours, I had a fully dynamic website displaying records from a MySQL database with over 10,000 records. It was pretty amazing how easy it really was.
MySQL and PHP
With just about every hosting package out there offering at least one included MySQL database, creating dynamic websites has become very easy to do. PHP and MySQL go hand-in-hand these days and if you are looking for a beginners guide to PHP, make sure that it dedicates a few chapters to working with MySQL. You will see the value as soon as you pick up the book.
Recommended PHP Books
Below you will find a slew of PHP books and reviews from people who have read and used them to help learn how to program using PHP. Many of them are written for the beginner and assume that you will not only be using PHP, but MySQL as well.
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