A decent beginner's book

Note that this is a beginner's book and the author did so state. Her other book, "PHP fast & easy web development" (2nd ed.) is also good for beginners although the structure of that book is more task-oriented. If you're looking for something that provides more in-depth coverage of PHP and MySQL, you may want to consider "PHP and MySQL Web Development" (2nd ed.) by Welling & Thomson.

i don't understand people's problems with this book!

     The author has posted errata, and there are only like 5 things, only 1 of which is an actual error. And that error doesn't even cause a "parse" error, just something you have to look hard to find. I gave this book to some of our junior level admins to get them up to speed on our development environment and they flew right through it and know a lot more than they did when they started. the author says over and over where to get help if there is a problem with installation, and how to determine where your errors are if something in your script is not working. but to say this is a bad or confusing book just makes no sense. I'm an IT manager and this book does a very good job of pulling from the three books to give you just what you need to get started. you're not supposed to get this book if you've been using these things for any great amount of time -- it's a beginner's book, it says that, and it is that. and it is a good one!