This dreadful book is so far below O'Reilly's normal high standard that it's hard to believe anyone at the company saw it before publication. It is riddled from start to finish with typos, technical errors, bad coding practices, contradictions and statements that are just plain wrong. It's quite baffling that O'Reilly would let a book this bad hit the shelves.

What is particularly worrying is that this is the second edition. The first was also full of mistakes (see the reviews on the O'Reilly website) and the publisher seems to have acknowledged this by rushing out this second edition only a year after the first, but the new edition fixes few of the problems of the first while introducing a host of new ones. One of the worst books ever published by O'Reilly. Avoid at all costs.

Maybe a genius or someone who already understands PHP basics will benefit from this book. I have made great progress with a number of instructional books, but got stuck in Chapter three of this one. It seems that important terms and concepts are not explained, not explained well, or explained in pages after the terms and concepts are first used.
I'm going to search for another book on PHP & MySQL.

I have not bought a textbook in over five years. Back then, O'Reilly was a reputable brand. So when I needed to learn PHP and MySQL, I bought this book without doing any research. I will never blindly buy an O'Reilly book again.

I got to page 11 before finding my first typo. After that, I lost track of all the typos and coding mistakes I've seen. Mind you, this is the 2nd edition of this book. Clearly, the authors did not proofread their book, nor did anyone else at O'Reilly, nor did anyone who read the 1st edition (?). I have learned to not trust anything in this book and instead use google for my php/mysql questions. Also, the mistakes are not all obvious typos -- some are mistakes in reasoning, which I can catch because I have extensive experience with computers.

While this is a typical O'Reilly book (marvelously and expertly written), there weren't many examples of utilizing what you just learned such that it would sink in. It also pre-supposed a bit (not much mind you) of programming experience/knowledge of which I have none. The description is a bit mis-leading that way as it states that if you know HTML and are ready for the next step this is the book. It should say, if you know HTML, a bit of C, or PERL, and some SQL you will benefit from learning PHP & MySQL. Not disappointed, just not the book for me...

It is not quite clear to me how any technical editor, let alone from a publisher specializing in technology books, could pass this text as is. It is quite obvious that the authors may know their way around developing simple database-driven web sites but completely miss basic programming topics (OOP, constructors, static variables etc. - all are explained in confusing and, at times, incorrect language).

Add to that grammatical errors, and perhaps a reminder that "kraut" is a derogatory term better left out of a mainstream publication, and it's quite baffling how this book made it to print in its current form.

I haven't seen other publications on the topic to compare against but this one certainly was a disappointment.

Michele E. Davis and John A. Phillips may have had the best intentions when they set out to write a "Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Dynamic, Database-Driven Web Sites" for the beginner to intermediate user, but the wheels fall off pretty early on in the undertaking.

I'm no PHP expert (and I really don't want to be), but I do know a thing or two about MySQL, and I've tinkered around enough with my own blogging software to understand the reasoning behind developing a dynamic web application. I tend to judge an author's ability to explain new concepts to me by how well they explain what I already know. To that end, "Learning PHP & MySQL" thundered so quickly and clumsily through it's rudimentary explanation of server-side application theory (one typo, two flagrant contradictions in one paragraph, and a smattering of poorly-executed visuals), that I have to wonder what care Davis & Phillips devote to the rest of their project.

The answer was pretty clear by the time I skimmed past the "How to install Apache, PHP, and MySQL" explanation and landed smack in a very dry, code-littered treatise on PHP variables and strings, conditionals, and arrays. So much for the foreplay.

Like 99% of the free information available in the open source community (and every other O'Reilly reference I've ever purchased -you think I would have learned my lesson by now), this book is poorly organized, shoddily edited, sparse, and mind-numbingly arcane.

I really enjoyed reading this one! The authors have an easy style that lets you accelerate if you already have a good grasp of that topic but want a refresher. If the section covers something you don't know then there are clear code examples and text that explains what the code does.

Don't make the assumption you'll learn lots of PHP and MySQL from one book! You'll get an introduction to both that is much lighter than covered in other O'Reilly books. Where this book shines is in the juncture of the two; it really makes clear some of the ways you can customize web pages using a database. Once you lay this one down you should spend a few hours with a favorite beverage; just toss some of the possibilities around in your head.

If you have a beginning understanding of PHP and/or MySQL, this book will help you take the next step. It will also help you understand technologies like Joomla and other database-driven websites. You won't learn how to program, in a general sense, but you'll get turned on by the possibilities. If you're already a coder but new to PHP and MySQL, you'll get a taste of what can be accomplished with this powerful combination.