One of the best self help books I've ever seen!

After unsuccessful struggles with other PHP and MySQL books, which caused me to fear I would never learn, thank God I found "Fast and Easy Web Development." Within a day I was writing code and I worked through the entire book in 4 days. After that I never looked back. A year later I have created a highly complex, database intensive site that includes an onsite email system, shopping cart, and all the other staples of an e-commerce site. Make no mistake, her book is introductory, and I quickly moved on to Professional PHP and other more advanced books (I now own 9 PHP books and 4 MySQL books). Nonetheless, I would never have understood them were it not for Meloni. Her book is at just the right level for a beginner. The examples are clear, and nearly every time I was just thinking "but what about....", she answered my question. Even better, her examples were FUN to work through! Some of the other books I've got are valuable, but fun? I think not.

I don't think the negative reviews of her book are fair. Her book is for beginners. So why are advanced programmers who found her book inadequate giving it 1 or 2 stars? That's like a medical doctor criticizing a book on first aid because it doesn't explain how to do heart surgery. People also bitched about typos in the book. But Meloni has a comprehensive listing of all typos on her web site at thickbook.com. So the first thing I did when I got her book was go to the site and correct the typos (there were actually very few). Also, when I was getting started, Meloni answered several emails I sent her to ask for help on problems when I was stuck. That's clearly above the call of duty.

In short, if you're a beginning programmer, go with Meloni.

Pretty good for beginners

     I read the reviews of the Professional PHP Programming book, and noted a lot of people said there were typos in that book, even though it was very good otherwise. As a PHP novice, I cannot afford to muddle through a typo-ridden book. So I looked at Web Applications With PHP 4, and that book was so advanced that the *first* chapter is titled "Advanced PHP" -- no install guide or anything else.

This book, PHP Essentials, is geared toward not only PHP newbies, but also people who have never programmed anything in any language. That's a little bit basic even for me, as I do at least know Perl and JavaScript. But it looked better that the first two books I tried, so I bought it.

I don't regret buying it. It is written in such a simple, friendly manner, that I was able to breeze through the first half in about an hour. If you're good at HTML, and you're looking to get into programming, this may be just what you need. This book will teach you, in basic terms, how to create if-else statements, what the proper syntax is for PHP code, how it integrates into the HTML page, what variables are, how to capture form data and write it to a file or database, how to send email from a Web page, how to send HTTP headers (so you can set cookies and do redirects), and it will step you through building a shopping cart system.

Now, if that were it, this book would be a five star book. However, being that I do have some programming background, and did have some idea of what PHP could do, let me tell you why I gave it four stars instead of five. First, there are some technical inaccuracies, such as the statement that Netscape 3+ supports style sheets (Netscape 3 has zero support, it's only Netscape 4+). But that's not bad. Second, nowhere does she address the "gasp, mixing HTML and code" programming debate. And finally, as another reviewer said, this book really is just the essentials, and I think it's not even that. Because there is a whopping omission: how to create a file that pulls in other files, like Server Side Includes. While the book covers how to open a file and read/write to it, the book never goes into detail about just linking in a file. This is important, because it's a fundamental feature. In fact, PHP has two commands for doing it, and neither one is mentioned, not even in the commands listed in the appendix.

So, if you're new to PHP and new to programming in general, this is a good -- great -- introductory book. You could learn the basics of programming with this book, and put yourself into a better paying job! But if you have some programming background, or even some PHP background, this book isn't going to feel very thorough.

Great Starter Book

     This book isn't written like a novel. It's not made to make you laugh, cry, or write art forms for programs. This is one of the most straighforward intro programming books I have covered in a long time.. and it was FUN -- I was up until 05:00 one night after starting into the book, just playing around with each new feature as Julie talked of them, writing my own test code as I went.

The book covers many aspects of PHP in enough detail to get you started with the language. The first 8 pages of chapter 2 contain an HTML refresher on forms, tables, lists, etc, which was helpful to me: I haven't dabbled in HTML for some time. Also included is a pretty good Appendix (Appendix A) which contains a lot of reference material which makes reviewing the small details of functions you've previously read of quite easy.

Though almost anyone can pick up the book and get started with some PHP, you'll get maximum enjoyment and will move faster through the book if you know some basic C++, as the loops are set up pretty much the exact same way. As well, knowledge of basic HTML (things such as the and tags, and the attributes that many tags can take.)

If I could change something about the book it'd be: 1- more tables in the book (i.e., in the section on writing/reading data files, it lists the modes, but a table would make that very similar text easier to parse, and see differences.) 2- Add a small section early on with information on loops and general style for the 100% neophyte computer programmer. 3- A section on host security would be nice.. but that's just a personal wish, and can't really be expected in this type of book for beginning.

To sum up-- if you want to jump into the language, hit every base while having fun and moving FAST, while having fun, jump all over this book. Want to get deep with PHP? When you're done, you'll be able to play with all of the features and continue into a book more concentrated on a certain aspect of the language.

The author also has another PHP book out which I have yet to read, but I'll definantly thumb through it the next time I'm at the bookstore.