Sams Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL and Apache in 24 Hours
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Spotlight Customer Reviews
Average Customer Rating: 3.05Customer Rating: 5
Summary: Got me a step further in my web design career...
Comment: I checked out many books on PHP trying to learn it. This one has been the best so far. the explanations are very clear and concise. This will teach you the fundamentals of all you need to know to master PHP. It does not go into object oriented programming, but that does not matter to me because I have no use for it. It starts from a beginning level and teaches you about variables, operators and control statements and goes on to teach you about the whole PHP file system. The section on mySQL is done very well also. It shows you all the basic SQL commands that you will need to perform most tasks. The only thing I did not like about this book is that it talked about the Apache web server, which I was expecting (from the title). Since I am not running my own web server this information was useless to me, but it was explained in great detail. This reason will not make me lower my rating though, since I realize this was one of the books purposes. I am very fond of the Sam's series and I hope they continue to produce better and better books about programming. Great book overall.
Customer Rating: 3
Summary: The Longest Day
Comment: I have been a mainframe programmer for 13 years and have done web design for the past year. The following is my experience with this book.
First the good news:
1. I was able to successfully install PHP, Apache & MySQL.
2. I was able to successfully complete all the projects in the book.
3. I published one of my projects on a website.
Now the bad news:
1. There were critical typos in the book--not just captions under the wrong pictures but incorrect code. I spent many hours debugging the PHP code for the projects. The code errors I found were not in the errata on the SAMS website OR on thickbook.com. I sent one code correction to the editors and received an acknowledgement, but I just checked and the code typo is not included in the errata. There are code errors on pp. 245, 406, 417. E-mail me if you are also having problems with the code on those pages as the SAMS people do not seem to be concerned or aware of these errors.
2. The installation of the products did not go as smoothly as I hoped either. The instructions on what to download did not match how the websites now look. There was some missing information. I was able to get it all working only with a lot of trial and error.
This book contained projects that I was interested in learning: address book, storefront, shopping cart. With a little more diligence on the part of the proofreaders and technical editors, this book would have been great and I would have given it 5 stars.
Customer Rating: 1
Summary: Just awful!
Comment: I have never written a book review on Amazon before, but this book was so bad I figured I owed it to other buyers to tell them about it. The simple fact is that is poorly written. I have been a Coldfusion programmer for many years and have been blessed by well written books from Ben Forta. This author consistently took simple concepts and made them difficult. The examples were horrible. Instead of just showing simple the new concept could do, she made each new concept a review of the entire book. There were many things introduced that has no examples at all. I have never swore at a book more!