If you have absolutely no experience with PHP and want to jump into the the world of web development and potentially extend your skills to create real-world web applications, then PHP and this book are for you.

The book gives you a little of both world: PHP and MySQL. Teaching you the most popular functions of both PHP and MySQL, you should be able to write your own simple MySQL-driven PHP powered website or application in no time.

The book also dwell into simple real-world web applications written in PHP which you can build upon as you learn. These apps include: a web mail based service, a mailing list generator, a web forum, a content managing system and even a shopping cart system! All source and even the entire book is included within the accompanying CD-ROM disc.

This book alone is more than enough to get you started with PHP and MySQL programming. Of course, if you want to master or fine tune your skills in this field, I would suggest you continue your reading with: "PHP Functions", "Web Application Development with PHP 4.0", and "MySQL"; all published by New Rider.