Who This Book Is For
This book is for:
A hobbyist who wants to create an interactive web site for himself,
his family, or a nonprofit organization. A web site builder who wants to use the PHP setup provided by an ISP
or hosting provider. A small business owner who wants to put her company on the Web. A page designer who wants to communicate better with her developer
co-workers. A JavaScript whiz who wants to build server-side programs that
complement her client-side code. A blogger or HTML jockey who wants to easily add dynamic features to
her site. A Perl, ASP, or ColdFusion programmer who wants to get up to speed
with PHP. Anybody who wants a straightforward, jargon-free introduction to one
of the most popular programming languages for building an interactive
web site.
PHP's gentle learning curve and approachable syntax
make it an ideal "gateway" language
for the nontechnical web professional. Learning PHP
5 is aimed at both this interested, intelligent, but not
necessarily technical individual as well as at programmers familiar
with another language who want to learn PHP.
Aside from basic computer literacy (knowing how to type, moving files
around, surfing the Web), the only assumption that this book makes
about you is that you're acquainted with HTML. You
don't need to be an HTML master, but you should be
comfortable with the HTML tags that populate a basic web page such as
<html>, <head>,
<body>, <p>,
<a>, and <br>. If
you're not familiar with HTML, read HTML
& XHTML: The Definitive Guide, Fifth Edition, by Bill
Kennedy and Chuck Musciano (O'Reilly).
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