Best PHP/MySQL books for a beginner?
 

I've decided that I'm going to have to learn PHP and MySQL by myself because college classes are not an option for me anymore. I know from some of my classmates that the books they used were O'Reilly's and some kind of small PHP handbook. I'm not sure of the books they used for MySQL.

I was just wondering if there were any books that were better. If it makes a difference, I'm going to be looking to develop Content Management Systems for websites, and simply pull information from SQL databases.

I have two books that have helped me out al ot:

PHP fast & easy web development (Published by Premier Press) and
PHP by Example (Published by Que)

Both are very good books for beginners.

Eh, I wouldnt suggest any books, just try to learn it by trial and error, just like I have. :) and if you need any help PM me, I can help you with HTML PHP Mysql C++ anything. :)

I'd personally have to ask you to stop. Unless you want to learn these languages to modify existing projects, don't waste your time. There are better things to learn, such as Ruby on Rails or Perl.

But if you insist, I'd say you don't need books. There is a vast amount of documentation on MySQL and PHP on the internet, legal and otherwise. Don't waste your money on books for a language that isn't even complex.

Man, I never understood the hype behind RoR. Way too complex (reminds me of ASP--ugh) and it has no use compared to the PHP and Perl I am able to do already for my applications. That and it's not supported on most hosting I've found before, so there's more marks against it for me~

Anyways, as far as PHP goes I have not really found any books helpful in teaching it to me, as the documentation available here covers anything you would need to know about any function available under it--granted, this doesn't cover theory or anything, but they've got some really nifty bits of code too.

The one PHP book I have is PHP In a Nutshell, though it's a reference, so you can understand it's not full of tutorials by any stretch of the mind. Of course, I still reccomend you buy it if you're wanting to learn PHP. At $18, it's a steal.

For MySQL, a book from the same series comes to mind--MySQL In a Nutshell. Same applies as to what I said about the PHP book above (it's a reference), but the index is better and it taught me a lot more than the PHP book did. And for around ten bucks (used copy), it was well worth the investment~

Although I can't suggest any good php or mysql books, I can offer the following sites to help you out in learning those languages.

W3Schools Learning Website

PHP Website Use the tutorial pages found on this site.

MySQL Developer Website

PHP wasn't created with the goal of being the backend of massive web applications. It sort of grew into that. I use PHP for small things on my pages but would never try to script a forum in PHP.

And for me that's what it comes down to. I would never suggest PHP to anyone who intends on making a large web application. I don't know anything about ASP except that it exists, so I can't really compare Rails to ASP but something tells me that they're hardly similar. Ruby itself is growing quickly in popularity.

Also, Dreamhost supports Rails. I wouldn't suggest another host to anyone for any type of website. 1 TB of bandwidth for $10/mo = win. You should already be hosted by Dreamhost!

How much has RoR improved over the last year. I used it last year and it was a nightmare. Features weren't working, functions acted differently than described, etc...

To each his or her own, then. I've written rather large applications in PHP without any hint of a problem before, and it was easier than anything like ASP (which I hate) or like RoR appears to be--even Perl.

I hate Dreamhost so much. First, I'd never use 1 TB of bandwidth. Second, all the specs tripling/quadrupling every few months is kind of disturbing. Third, I know of a great deal of sites hosted by Dreamhost, and all of them are down about 60% of the time. See my problem with them? It might be ISP, but if I can't talk to them I disapprove of their hosting, even if it is not their fault. I personally use Surpass, and it's been absolutely perfect.

I had Dreamhost for about six months previously; and all downtime was announced; but I personally do not recall any time I tried to visit my own site and couldn't.

For the doubters, Dreamhost has a 97 day money back guarantee. If you don't find out that your site has been down for upt to approximately (supposedly) 63 of those days before it's too late, then you're an idiot.

Also, how can you complain about an abundance of features? "I don't need this much space or bandwidth, so Dreamhost sucks! I will choose a host that costs $4/mo less instead." :confused:

I also like how I used a promo code and got a year's worth of hosting for $22.40 plus a free domain.

While talking about PHP, does anybody have a simple php poll script that lets you votes? (some questions with several options to chose from)

There's really no reason to ask that here. If you google "PHP poll script" I'm sure there will be more than enough results.