Educational Resources for Learning PHP and MySQL

Documentation for PHP and MySQL™ available online or in various in downloadable formats (PDF, HTML, CHM) and languages.

• PHP Documentation
• MySQL™ Documentation
• MySQL™ Workbench
• MySQL™ Administrator (legacy, basic stuff, easier than learning Workbench
• Windows Extended HTML Help for PHP.
• PEAR Coding Standards offers a perspective on script style. Adopting a consistent style and placing comments in your code as you write it will prevent you from tearing your hair out when you re-visit a project after the passage of time.

Books on PHP

• Search Amazon.com for current PHP book deals, including used books which are often in perfect condition
• PHP Cookbook offers a great index of common tasks and their solutions.
• Programming PHP presents a great deal of information in a very concise manner.
• PHP and MySQL™ Web Development is a good book for beginners (easy reading, examples on CD).
• PHP.NET Booklist (English)

Useful PHP / MySQL Applications

• Adminer (like phpMyAdmin in just one script!)
• WampServer installs Apache, PHP, and MySQL™ on Windows.
• phpMyAdmin is the most widely used MySQL™ interface.
• dBug.php (nice include file for troubleshooting / debugging)
• phpMyEdit excellent form generator (PHP / MySQL™)
• Database Conversion Utilities (those which I've acquired are excellent)
• phpWebFileManager

Material for PHP Newbies

• PHP Form Generator
• http://www.phpfreaks.com
• http://www.w3schools.com/php/
• http://www.hudzilla.org/phpbook/

Links to PHP development sites

• alt-php-faq.org
• Developer Shed
• Google Directory: Computer Programming Languages: PHP
• HotScripts
• LinuxGurus
• Newbie Network
• php.faqts
• PHP.NET
• PHPBuilder
• Resource Index
• SourceForge
• Zend

Web Development Tools and Links

• Notetab Pro may be the best *programmable* text editor on Earth!
• Comprehensive guide to .htaccess
• W3C and the CSS Property Index
• CSS Navigation Techniques
• w3schools.com and tizag.com offer a lot of reference material.
• Firefox with its Error Console and selected plug-ins is a Must Have!
• AddedBytes
• Total Validator
• W3C HTML, XHTML Validator
• W3C CSS Validation
• PhotoImpact X3 (graphics software, the poor man's PhotoShop™)
• Alchemy Mindworks (graphics software)
• Tango Icon Library and tlbox Icons
• Favicon Generator

Mobile server on USB drive

Uniform Server is free, mobile, open source WAMP package for Microsoft Windows (Apache, MySQL, PHP, Perl, phpMyAdmin, etc.) which can be installed on a USB drive, a hard drive, smartmedia card, etc. Uniform Server has an installer and it works great! No muss, no fuss. I migrated a content management system to a portable USB Flash Drive in 10 minutes ... the only scripts that I needed to change were a few PHP scripts that expected a document root of C:/apache/htdocs instead of Uniform Server's document root of W:/www. If you already have Apache and MySQL running as a service under Windows, simply shut down those services before (for example) firing up Uniform Server on a USB stick.

PHP Form Generator for MySQL™ MyISAM type tables