I updated my review from 5 stars to 4.

The author, it seems, has avoided changing the code within the examples offered. Though I'm sure this book was pretty close to spot on when it came out, over the duration of the last year and a half, there are differences that haven't been addressed and therefore I would wholly suggest passing on this book to a more updated learning experience.

Don't get me wrong, it's a great book. JavaScript, JQuery, CSS, and HTML5 are quite excellent and still worth the read if that's what you're looking for. However, MySQL and PHP have changed DRASTICALLY and if you learn from this book only you will need to supplement all of the knowledge gained and it will probably only lead to confusion.

A few examples:

*Salt and Hash: This book dedicates time to salting and hashing using ripemd. Most recently salting and hashing has been automated by the overlords of PHP into a singular function: password_hash(STRING, PRESET_ALGORITHM). There are currently, as far as I know, only two different algorithms to choose from: PASSWORD_BCRYPT or PASSWORD_DEFAULT. This was done because salting and hashing were produced incorrectly on so many sites that PHP's caretakers decided that it would be in everyone's best interest to simplify the process. Keep in mind that the password_hash function will automagically salt the hash so there is no step to do so. To verify the password from hash you would use the password_verify(STRING, HASHED_STRING) and it will return a Boolean.

*Sanitiation of User Input: Though important to realize when you're putting user input directly into the page, this book has an absolutely tremendous amount of pages dedicated to sanitizing strings. Honestly it's a large chunk of the PHP sections/code. The problem with the methods the author has prescribed is that they are outdated. Only briefly there is part of a chapter where he touches on prepared statements, which has become the correct way to instantiate MySQL queries. We do not need to sanitize our injected strings when using prepared statements. Why? Because prepared statements literally setup the query and prepare it for specific input. The bind_param() method of the mysqli prepare object makes certain that the input will only be interpreted as it's intended and a string will never be interpreted as a command.

This is a great book, full of information on current web creation technology, covering modern usage of PHP, MySQL, JavaScript and jQuery. It serves as a good reference book, while at the same time, providing brief examples to illustrate how to use each command or function as it is presented. I found the book easy to read and understand, and the examples clear and to the point. When I first opened this book I considered myself a reasonably proficient PHP and MySQL coder, though I was using these technologies as they existed eight years ago, when I first learned them. The book opened my eyes to the newer tools that are now available as well as more modern approaches to coding, including object-oriented programming and the power of jQuery.

I think this book would serve a beginning coder well, but would be even more valuable to someone who already has some experience under their belt using one or more of these technologies. This book has become my go-to book for any coding or syntax questions, and a good book to just browse through to learn a new trick or two. I recommend it without hesitation to anyone that would like to improve their programming skills in the covered topics.

After a couple years of coding HTML, CSS, and Javascript/Jquery, I decided to dive into PHP/MySQL to start building some backend chops. To be fair, I'm comparing this book to Learning Web Design by Jennifer Robbins and Javascript/JQuery: The Missing Manual by David Sawyer McFarland, which I consulted to learn all my front-end knowledge and which have to be two of the most straightforward, well-organized, example-driven books I've ever read. Sadly, Nixon's book didn't have the same great qualities. There's no doubt this guy knows PHP backward and forward. The trouble is that he doesn't really seem to know how to convey that knowledge to a beginner. His writing doesn't seem to have much organization to it- there's a lot of "Hey, PHP can do this, oh and while I'm at it, it can also do this. And by the way, it can also do this, but I'm only showing it to you because you really don't want to do it this way." He also, in my opinion, takes for granted that you already understand how internet databases work, which in my case was a poor assumption. My biggest complaint is the lack of PRACTICAL examples. For every concept he describes, he provides a small, isolated example, but they often don't make sense because you don't understand WHY or in what context he's trying to perform the action he's performing. I'm the kind of guy that really needs to see the bigger picture in order to learn what each detail is contributing to it. And those bigger picture examples just weren't there for me.

All in all, I think the author really knows what he's talking about and probably provides a lot of good information, but as a complete beginner to PHP and back-end programming, I couldn't get any utility out of it. The writing was just too disorganized. This review does not apply to the Javascript section of the book, as I already know how to code JS and didn't read that.

Clear, concise and referential guide to the modern web browser and its major components, the SQL database, the horrid JavaScript and its even worse cousin, PHP.

I read half the book online flying to Florida and back. The text is to the point, with enough small examples for immediate comprehension, but not so much as to bog down with lethargic samples. When I got back, I was able to fire up my own website and start working with SQL!

Perhaps my only regret is that the SQL section is so short. Still, there are lots of other books entirely on that subject, and more info on each topic would have inflated this book to a massive thousand pager.

Kudos for including some up to date advice on thwarting SQL injection attacks!