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A book I have used to get my feet wet (so to speak) is PRACTICAL PHP & MYSQL written by Jono Bacon.

The book spends a little time discussing some key concepts and elements of PHP & MySQL then immediately dives into developing some practical application. While the style and conventions are NOT like the other 10 books I have reviewed, this style works for me coming more from the Business Owners perspective. LESS THEORY & CONCEPT ... MORE WHAT CAN IT DO AND HOW DO WE DO THAT (with some limited explanations).

The books covers 8 practical Applications :

1. Building a BLOG (Weblog)
2. Discussion Forum
3. Creating a Shopping Cart
4. Building an Online Auction
5. Creating a Web -Based Calendar
6. FAQ Content Management System
7. Building a Re-Usable Project
8. Building a News Web Site

The book comes complete with a Live CD which includes all code in the book AND a complete development environment in which to run the code. You get PHP, MySQL, as well as Apache, phpMyAdmin, Monzilla Firefox, PEAR Modules, and much more ... all contained on a Linux operating system. AND the entire systems runs on the CD ... you do not even have to load it onto your computer!!!!

I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning some of the practical business uses for PHP & MySQL.

You can purchase the book at Books-A-Million (where I did) or Amazon.com

Here is a link to his site : www.jonobcon.org