I want to learn PHP

[johnbarry879]

tizag.com is a good one to start with

[macz.diamonds61]

The best resource to learn PHP really is php.net. There are a lot of tutorials out there that can be found on Google on basic structure of php and how to keep your code clean and friendly. Once you have the basics down use php.net and do research, practice and keep at it until you get it.

If you go to php.net and click on the getting help nav link at the top of the page it gives you a good list of how to find the best help and support for learning php.

[essellar]

One of the best sources to learn programming is Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP, or the Wizard Book). It covers programming in terms of Scheme, not PHP, but programming doesn't depend upon understanding a particular language. The syntax of Scheme is one of the simplest.

And just to follow up on that a bit, for those who have trouble with extracting the goodness out of books, there's a 20-lecture video series of SICP available for free online. It's from a ten-day compressed version of the MIT 6.001 course given to Hewlett Packard employees. Lectures 1a to 5b (the first ten) are the core of programming principles. The last ten are interesting, but are kind of advanced and may not seem to have much application to the typical CRUD (create, read, update, delete) PHP+MySQL web application until you get enough experience under your belt to start thinking about designing your own "language" on PHP (the next step beyond procedural and object-oriented programming). The lectures are based on an older version of the book, so there isn't a one-to-one correspondence, but they will help.

For a quick intro to PHP+MySQL, something you can do in a week (or even a weekend), Head-First PHP & MySQL isn't horrible. It's outdated, uses the soon-to-be-deprecated mysql extension, and doesn't touch at all on best practices, so it should not be looked upon as something that will teach you all, or even most, of what you want to know. It's not worth the money to buy unless you have money to spare -- you won't want to keep it around as a reference once you've gone through it once -- but that's why they invented libraries. What it will do is give you the vocabulary to understand the better references (suggested in misson's links) you'll use later.

(Don't let the book's thickness intimidate you. The Head First series is, well, different, with a lot of illustrations and so on surrounding the concepts they teach. Tech-heads tend to hate Head First books -- you could compress all of the "vital information" in HFPHP into maybe fifty pages, so why didn't they do that? In my experience teaching adults, "ordinary people" tend to learn more quickly and more easily using this approach.)