Learning PHP 5-Who This Book Is For

Who This Book Is For

This book is for:

A hobbyist who wants to create an interactive web site for himself, his family, or a nonprofit organization.
A web site builder who wants to use the PHP setup provided by an ISP or hosting provider.
A small business owner who wants to put her company on the Web.
A page designer who wants to communicate better with her developer co-workers.
A JavaScript whiz who wants to build server-side programs that complement her client-side code.
A blogger or HTML jockey who wants to easily add dynamic features to her site.
A Perl, ASP, or ColdFusion programmer who wants to get up to speed with PHP.
Anybody who wants a straightforward, jargon-free introduction to one of the most popular programming languages for building an interactive web site.

PHP's gentle learning curve and approachable syntax make it an ideal "gateway" language for the nontechnical web professional. Learning PHP 5 is aimed at both this interested, intelligent, but not necessarily technical individual as well as at programmers familiar with another language who want to learn PHP.

Aside from basic computer literacy (knowing how to type, moving files around, surfing the Web), the only assumption that this book makes about you is that you're acquainted with HTML. You don't need to be an HTML master, but you should be comfortable with the HTML tags that populate a basic web page such as <html>, <head>, <body>, <p>, <a>, and <br>. If you're not familiar with HTML, read HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide, Fifth Edition, by Bill Kennedy and Chuck Musciano (O'Reilly).

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