Creating Interactive Websites with PHP and Web Services

I became webmaster for a large (?) website (over 200 pages in the root folder alone) that had been designed for Contribute (a "distributed" Dreamweaver, sort of). I read this book, implemented almost verbatim the entire website configuration descriptions and have been running this for several years now with not a regret. I knew PHP, JavaScript, MySQL, and CSS somewhat when I started but had never worked at a large formal website before. This book was exactly what I needed, the way I needed it at the time I needed it. I literally converted in place and while live that web site to the model configuration description in this book by using this book, completely successfully. In retrospect what it taught me now seems self-evident which means that it did its job. If you want solid grounding in how to configure a template website then in my opinion you will be greatly benefitted by this book - I read it, I used it, and it worked. I've modified much over the years but what I learned and used from this book continues to be my foundation and it is a solid, effective efficient foundation, as time has well proven.

This is a wonderful book. The code is easy to understand and is broken down. Eric did a wonderful job with this book. I successfully developed a member management system thanks to this book.. I give it five stars.

I am a graphic designer turned web designer with years of experience now coding HTML and CSS directly. Wanting to broaden my overall web site development abilities I started looing at books on basic scripting and database development for creating more efficient and dynamic sites. My interest was not to learn PHP for the sake of knowing another language and becoming a master programmer (as the aim of most other programming books out there seems to be), but to find a book that was geared toward immediately effective and productive learning-while-building with programming and database basics, for someone who hasn't done those things before. This book seemed to have posed the same question as myself, and out of the shelves and shelves of 'standard' programming books this one answered my query.

This is a very informative book! It is extremely thorough from start to finish, with real world examples and solutions. It is obvious that the author put a great deal of time into this book, as evidenced by the in-depth coverage of the code and services. This book, along with www.phpfreaks.com, gives the average coder the tools necessary to become a superior developer.I highly recommend this book to anyone who is working with PHP and web services, beginner to advanced levels. Great job, Eric!

I'm your basic novice non-programmer type looking for a career change. I lucked into this book at Borders, sat down and looked through it. Well, I came home and have been working my way through this book all night. I've learned more about PHP and MySQL in about six hours time than I had expected to. This book is so incredibly easy to follow that I can't even put it down to sleep. So far, I'm up to Chapter 4 and going fast. Since I read the reviews after I bought the book, I made it a point to place a check mark next to each example that worked. That's all of them. So far, apart from the 'mydb' file that Rosenbrock used as an example in database creation, I've also managed to create a database for my movie collection. Next database will be my extensive library of books!The beauty of Rosenbrock's book is that he teaches how to do the things I actually want to do. Also, he assumes a reasonably intelligent audience. Rosenbrock also introduced me to a little gem, phpMyAdmin that makes MySQL far less painful. I'd been sweating bullets just thinking about getting into MySQL. Well, I'm in it and relishing it, all thanks to Eric Rosenbrock. The back of his book tells that the user level is Intermediate/Advanced, but I think that since his coverage is so painstaking and thorough, it should actually be Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced.I'd recommend that anybody wanting to do PHP and MySQL. I've got to find out what else Eric Rosenbrock has written. The dude is terrific!