Comments on: PHP Fast & Easy Web Development, 2nd Edition

By: Othello

Othello — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 05:14:15 +0000

Plain and simple – THE guide to use to start programming PHP. Half way through, I was dying to get finished so I could start developing my own projects. PHP is a great language for Web programmers!

By: Winfred

Winfred — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 05:03:03 +0000

PHP Fast & Easy Web development is an ideal introduction on setting up your own local Apache server, complete with PHP and MySQL support, for Windows and Linus alike!! This book focuses on developing locally, which is a bonus for those of us who don’t have acces to a PHP-enabled shared-hosting account. Meloni helps you get started quick, and holds your hand along the way, all the way: if you are really stuck, you can send her an e-mail and you will get a brief, but to the point, answer. This book is meant for beginners, and it shows: it is quite thin on content and will provide too little information for getting a proper grounding in programming languages. Stuff like Arrays, Variables and Database Design are NOT explained in detail. Instead, this book showcases the basic possiblities of PHP and MySQL by guiding you through examples of database connections, user authentication, sessions and more. As such it is a great way to get a grasp of the things you can do with PHP, and the time and experience required to do them. I forgive Meloni for glossing over EVERY SINGLE PROGRAMMING CONCEPT THERE IS, since almost all other books will cover those in detail. However, I would ask of her to at least explain debugging PHP (What to do if your script doesn’t work).

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 02:16:53 +0000

This book is a very good starting point for anyone who wishes to begin programming in PHP. I picked this book up in hopes of getting somewhat of a grasp of PHP. The book was very successful in presenting appropriate concepts for beginners such as: varibables, arrays and operators. The book also had a few chapters on using MySQL, which is very helpful for anyone who wishes to create full-blown web applications such as shopping carts, forums and news services on their websites. However, the book was somewhat vague in the amount of content presented. The book is like a giant PHP coding tutorial, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, if you’re not a beginner. For a complete introduction to PHP/MySQL I would suggest buying this book AND PHP/MySQL Web Development by Luke Welling and Laura Thompson. With these two books, a beginner will be on the right path down the complicated road of online applications.