Reviews for PHP Solutions: Dynamic Web Design Made Easy

1. PHP Solutions

   Rated 4 out of 5 stars, March 12rd, 2010

   This is a great book. I bought it to follow on from "Dreamweaver CS4 with CSS, Ajax and PHP." It is easy to follow and gives you a good grounding in PHP.

2. Best book so far

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, January 12th, 2010

   This book takes you through the first steps of programming like it is nothing. I have read some books of PHP and MySQL and PHP Solutions is by far the best book. Easy to read/understand! 5 stars and an award for David Powers!
   
   Also this book has a good binding and stays open by itself. It is pretty frustrating when a book doesn't stay open by itself when reading, or typing code.
   
   I just ordered his second book about OOP!
   
   Christophe

3. Very good but a missed opportunity

   Rated 4 out of 5 stars, October 12th, 2008

   This was one of a couple of PHP books that I bought at the same time. This one is getting dog-eared, the other is gathering dust. The book's main aim is to take the reader from beginner to being able to develop a database driven website.
   
   The chosen project - an on-line photo gallery - happened to be sufficiently close to what I was looking to develop myself, so learning and code to copy/modify in one.
   
   By and large the book achieves its aims but misses one or two tricks along the way. The first is security - this is mentioned in one of the final chapters but it would have been better if some simple techniques such as input filtering had been introduced early on along with the reasoning behind them.
   
   Tying PHP to MySQL is the theme of the second part of the book and three approaches are used: the original MySQL extension; MySQLi and PDO. This leads to the second missed opportunity. The code for all three approaches is directly embedded in the HTML, it would have been nice to see an API developed to hide the actual implementation in use. The author's follow on book "PHP: OOP Solutions" does move the code into wrapper functions which effectively abstracts the underlying data model from the presentation.
   
   Despite the above reservations, this book is well worth getting.

4. This book really made sense-- I am finally starting to feel like a programmer!!

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, October 12rd, 2008

   What a great book, after reading many different books on PHP i never felt confident enough to think for myself. That was until i read this book, each chapter is split up into manageable chucks where you can really apply what you are reading into your own website design. The author users a sample site with a little css and html and applies php to this so you can really see the impact of what is going on. With other books they shown you the php but i found it difficult to apply this to the design of my a site. This books incorporates all three, the php and a little css and html(although a you need to understand html and css as it does not explain these just gives you the code)
   
   Even if you dont fully understand an exercise you can still complete it by following the code to see the outcome. And when i needed that particularly function on my own site after reading over it again it made perfect sense.
   
   After reading this book i am now well on my way to developing a dynamic website with a CMS, i just want to say a big thank you to the author for making this possible.
   
   The only thing that i would want different in this book is more of it as every chapter taught me some really useful PHP.
   
   
   
   

5. EXCELLENT STARTING POINT - USE IT TODAY

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, March 12th, 2008

   I have just received this book today and by this evening I have setup secure webpages - understand including scripts and pages to save time developing, created a contact form which emails me and the customer. Wow, it really doesn't get much easier than this - everything is explained, security is a major point and all options seem to be covered.
   
   A must! even has a website with latest updates and corrections.