--- M Brovage <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I know you've heard this before so please have patience: > > What is the best book for a PHP newbie? > > What sites are the standard resources to learn PHP - includes tutorials and > reviews. > > Are there PHP programs that one can buy that are PHP orientated. (I have > Dreamweaver 8 and I know it does PHP, but you would buy it for html not PHP.)
Since you are new, I will take this opportunity to suggest that you supply informative subject lines. I took the liberty to modify the subject in this reply so it will be more likely to get a response than "Newbie Question" or "Help!!!" might. Ultimately, there isn't a single best PHP book for everyone. Usually you have to pick up a book and see which one "speaks to you" -- it provides examples and explanations you can understand and hopefully examples you want to work on. I like the Peachpit books by Ullman for learning PHP. There are titles like PHP FOR THE WORLD WIDE WEB, PHP & MYSQL FOR THE WORLD WIDE WEB, and PHP ADVANCED FOR THE WORLD WIDE WEB. They are inexpensive and have pretty good examples. If you've done some programming before in another language, you may simply be interested in "How can I ____ in PHP?" For this, the cookbook style books may be helpful. There's one from O'Reilly and one from Sams which are each good. As far as web sites go, the http://www.w3schools.com site has a PHP section (along with HTML, CSS, JS, etc). You can also find things in http://www.webmonkey.com and other sites which may be relevant for you. When looking for free or low-priced programs you can install on your server, look to http://www.hotscripts.com which has programs in PHP and other languages. Most hosting accounts will run Linux or Unix with Apache, PHP & MySQL. It usually works best if you develop and test in the same sort of environment. You can set up a Linux system with out huge difficulties and it is a good learning experience. I don't recommend using Windows or IIS for PHP development. It can be done but it is more of a headache and security nightmare than it is worth. Remember that PHP scripts are different than HTML pages. You can't simply open a PHP page in your browser with a direct link to the filesystem on your machine. Instead you need to test by processing the script through Apache. Often this is done by using a URL like http://localhost/script.php or equivalent. The script.php file needs to be in a particular place for your web server program to see it. The specifics depend on your host or home installation. James
