An excellent book, for beginner to intermediate range, as the author states, with no OOP as also the author states in page xii. Helpfull for teaching Dynamic Web sites with PHP and MySQL.

PHP and MySQL For Dynamic Web Sites is one heck of a book for both beginner and advanced users of PHP and MySQL. If you are an advanced user you will probably find more than just a couple things that can speed up your coding techniques and you may even just learn something new that you didn't know before. If you are a beginner user then the book will take you step by step from the beginning of learning how to use PHP and MySQL.

The book starts out with the fundamentals of PHP with basic syntax. From there you end up going through basically everything there is to know about PHP untill you get to the introduction to MySQL which will start you out just like the PHP chapters with basic syntax. Once you have gone through both sections of PHP and MySQL introductions you will then start to learn how to put both together to start making websites. From there you will gain more and more knowledge, hints, tips, and shortcuts to optimize and create professional PHP and MySQL code for a PHP/MySQL driven website.

There are many strong points in this book, but I must point out the strongest out of all of them which is the fact that at the end of this book it provides in depth detailed tutorials or examples of some very helpfull things to get you started with your own website. There are only three, but if there were anymore the book would weigh 20lbs. The three tutorials/examples include: Content Management, User Registration, and E-Commerce.

As I read through this book there were not many weak points to the book besides the fact that I threw my life away and read it because it was filled with so much interesting content. If I had to pick one weak point it would have to be the fact that all of the code in the book is restrained to a two-inch wide block and the code wraps around to the next line which kind of makes it hard to understand, but there is a fix for this as there is a website inside the book that you can go to where you can download every peice of source code in the book so you don't have to manually type it out.

After you've finished reading all the information in the book you'll find yourself drooling for more and the author apparently knew you'd be drooling for more as he put in seven pages of resources for you to read on the web.

In conclusion, if you are looking to learn PHP and MySQL or are just looking for a good refresher on the PHP/MySQL coding language then this book would be perfect for your needs. I give the book a five out of five stars.

If you're looking for a book on this subject then look no further. Not only is the author clear and concise, even more importantly, he is responsive. There is a companion website with all the sample code and support forums. Don't be a twit and ask the author to debug your code for you but if you have a valid question, don't hesitate to ask. I've found the author to be very responsive, friendly and knowledgeable. The support alone makes the purchase worth it. Throw in a good book and it's a deal that can't be beat.

The author teaches a complicated subject in plain English. I needed to learn PHP quickly and had practically every question answered on how to write PHP code and create a database.

The very few questions I had remaining were found on the author's website where a message board exists. The board is also supportive if you run into problems or have questions.

It was also a plus that I was able to download the scripts from the site instead of having to type them.

I am a programmer that looked into acquiring some PHP & MySQL knowledge, and this book was the perfect choice. For those with some experience in another programming languages, the pace of the book is perfect and thoroughly covers what needs to be known.
For complete beginners with no programming experience this book might be too hard, as it assumes the reader has some knowledge of programming principals and does very little to cover them.