Customer Reviews

PHP MySQL Website Programming: Problem - Design - Solution

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I know all of the other reviews are glowing, but I was actully disappointed by this book. While it is very thorough, I found the structure of the book to be haphazard and unintuitive. There are a lot of occurances of "but first, lets go back a bit," a sure sign of poor writing. While trying to keep to the problem-design-solution framework, the authors often introduced ideas in the problem phase, but never clearly addressed them in the design and solution phase -- often vaguely tying it all together with a statement like "and we took care of this problem as well" without really referencing it.

There is a great deal of information in this book, but I found it very difficult to extract coherently. And saying "but its not for beginners" is no excuse for poor writing.

There is absolutely no PHP or My-Sql teaching in this book. If your looking to see how a professional group of programmers use functions and how they outline their sites then this book is for you. BUT if you're looking for a book to learn any PHP My-Sql programming, don't buy this book. But if you do buy it, buy it used... It's not worth the new book price.

OK Guys,

I recognized that every review is always so clean (no spelling mistakes, no grammar errors). Sometimes I think the Team itself writes some of them to impress readers. ;-)

I can agree that this Book is not to bad, but if somebody says it's the best way to learn PHP then he's not completely right.
There is no way that you can see thro the whole php-code without having read a "PHP-only" book before.
I don't say that every little step has to be explained (the book would be 2000 and more pages big), but i couldn't find that this book is not made for beginners anywhere on the book-explanation page.

Nice book, but please when you are a beginner, try a more explaining book first. Then go and buy this one.

Thank you

A book like this was long awaited. There is no better way to learn than the method this book enunciates - the construction of each module that makes up a web site is clearly described through each of its chapters. It was also refreshing to see that the application that was implemented in the book is available online - forums,newsgroups, news feeds, message boards, complete shopping cart with check out features, and a very neatly written final chapter that takes a look at what could have been done better - refactoring, templating etc along with a fullish perspective of the whole application.

Kudos to the author team, for a job well done. I recommend this book to any programmer that wants to learn PHP, use PHP better (thru an OO approach) and build an effective and useful web site.

You should buy this book, if you want to learn PHP the most effective way. The book dissects the creation of a content driven website by its module, and presents content on creating each of these modules from scratch (thru individual chapters)...

You can't get more real world than this. Many thanks to the authors and the publisher.

I very highly recommend this book, and have just ordered 24 copies of it for my web development training class here in Arizona.

It appears as if most of the earlier reviews for this book were for the first edition. (Which brings up a good question - WHY is this book now useless?)

As with essentially every other book I've spent $40 - $50 for, this one is filled with poor content and code that does NOT work. If you look at the "sample" website for this book that uses the code that this book is supposed to help you build (which is now gone), many people hit a roadblock by page 28! The site is filed with comments from others who have been stuck on the same problem and can't move on. Perhaps the most revealing question there is "has anyone been successful in getting all the way through the book?" Not surprisingly, no one has answered.

The publisher's site still does not include an errata sheet (that would be asking too much), six YEARS after this book was first published.

Don't bother buying this one - unless you enjoy throwing another $50 down the toilet. I bought this book based upon the positive reviews found here - little did I realize that the second edition must be worse than the first!

The book is great. It comes with layouts of code on how to do pages like forums, creating ads, and taking polls. The only problem I had was using PEAR DB. As far as I know Pear is relatively new and it was way too hard to try and figure out how to incorporate that into my Database. I was using MySQL on CRUX, and for me it was difficult to figure out. They also use a lot of require_once lines. I know what they are used for, but the code was so long that for one page they used require_once for multiple different pages. I think for a beginner, this book is not the way to go. For people who have no dea what PEAR is or how to set it up, this book Not the way to go. If your experienced somewhat in PHP and know Pear, knock yourself out!

For me, the book was too advanced, I have done some web sites in PHP but not at this level. Hope I helped some people with their decision.

The approach that has been used in this book is not only innovative, but also very methodical and piece-by-piece dissection of how to create
a web site using a combination of PHP, mySQL and Apache.

It should appeal not only to readers who have a prior understanding of PHP, but also to the beginning and intermediate ones who want a rock solid approach to learning PHP to create content driven web sites.

I highly recommend this book for purchase.

The book is enjoyable to read; it focuses on the step-by-step delivery of a very dynamic website,starting with the basics of designing the file layout and how the files will work together. It then goes into more detail on delivering each feature, provides enough general ideas to help most PHP enthusiasts and budding developers understand the basics and advantages of OOP programming (although there are a few functions thrown in to ease in those not conversant with OOP)...

This book is simply the best among the sea of books available today on PHP and MySQL. Anyone wanting to learn how to create a site using the three popular technologies - PHP, Apache and MySQL should buy this book.

What i found most interesting was the LEARNING CURVE - too fast, too ruddy fast that your client will gape at the speed at which you put together his site.