PHP Solutions: Dynamic Web Design Made Easy: Amazon.co.uk: David Powers: Books

Product Description

In this book you'll learn how to:

Create dynamic websites with design and usability in mind, as well as functionality
Understand how PHP scripts work, giving you confidence to adapt them to your own needs
Bring online forms to life, check required fields, and ensure user input is safe to process
Upload files and automatically create thumbnails from larger images
Manage website content with a searchable database

You want to make your websites more dynamic by adding a feedback form, creating a private area where members can upload images that are automatically resized, or perhaps storing all your content in a database. The problem is, you're not a programmer and the thought of writing code sends a chill up your spine. Or maybe you've dabbled a bit in PHP and MySQL, but you can't get past baby steps. If this describes you, then you've just found the right book. PHP and the MySQL database are deservedly the most popular combination for creating dynamic websites. They're free, easy to use, and provided by many web hosting companies in their standard packages. Unfortunately, most PHP books either expect you to be an expert already or force you to go through endless exercises of little practical value. In contrast, this book gives you real value right away through a series of practical examples that you can incorporate directly into your sites, optimizing performance and adding functionality such as file uploading, email feedback forms, image galleries, content management systems, and much more. Each solution is created with not only functionality in mind, but also visual design.But this book doesn't just provide a collection of ready-made scripts: each PHP Solution builds on what's gone before, teaching you the basics of PHP and database design quickly and painlessly. By the end of the book, you'll have the confidence to start writing your own scripts or-if you prefer to leave that task to othersto adapt existing scripts to your own requirements.Right from the start, you're shown how easy it is to protect your sites by adopting secure coding practices. The book has been written with an eye on forward and backward compatibilityrecommending the latest PHP 5 techniques, but providing alternative solutions for servers still running PHP 4.3. All database examples demonstrate how to use the original MySQL extension, MySQL Improved, or the PHP Data Objects (PDO) introduced in PHP 5.1, letting you choose the most suitable option for your setup. Summary of Contents:

Chapter 1: What Is PHPAnd Why Should I Care?
Chapter 2: Getting Ready to Work with PHP
Chapter 3: How to Write PHP Scripts
Chapter 4: Lightening Your Workload with Includes
Chapter 5: Bringing Forms to Life
Chapter 6: Uploading Files
Chapter 7: Using PHP to Manage Files
Chapter 8: Generating Thumbnail Images
Chapter 9: Pages That Remember: Simple Login and Multipage Forms
Chapter 10: Setting Up MySQL and phpMyAdmin
Chapter 11: Getting Started with a Database
Chapter 12: Creating a Dynamic Online Gallery
Chapter 13: Managing Content
Chapter 14: Solutions to Common PHP/MySQL Problems
Chapter 15: Keeping Intruders at Bay

About the Author

David is a writer and broadcaster on international affairs, with
a particular interest in Japan. He got the Internet bug in the days when
Netscape ruled the world and websites were entirely hand coded. Then came
WYSIWYDDG (what you see is what you definitely don't get) HTML editors. He
tried a whole bunch, including several Japanese ones, before discovering
Dreamweaver 3, and he's stayed with Dreamweaver ever since. He believes MX
2004 is the best yet, and might be persuaded to say it's finally WYSIWYG if
he didn't spend so much time buried in Code view.

David started creating dynamic websites with ASP and is thankful that
unlike Cleopatra, he managed to survive before discovering PHP. When not
developing websites, he spends his time writing about Japan, translating
Japanese (he's translated several plays), and savoring the delights of raw
fish and sake.

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful

A great book for the PHP beginner 8 Dec 2006

By carrierpigeon

Format:Paperback

This book was exactly what I was waiting for. An introduction to PHP for the designer with instantly applicable examples. Even as I worked through the chapters I was able to use my new found powers in real life projects.

That's the most important aspect of a book like this; that you can see the results immediately and are buoyed along by small successes, rather than getting bogged down in massive amounts of theory and code before you can do anything practical.

I would recommend this book to any web designers who are comfortable with XHTML and CSS, but are daunted by the server-side side of things.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

Very good but a missed opportunity 17 Oct 2008

By R. Wightman

This was one of a couple of PHP books that I bought at the same time. This one is getting dog-eared, the other is gathering dust. The book's main aim is to take the reader from beginner to being able to develop a database driven website.

The chosen project - an on-line photo gallery - happened to be sufficiently close to what I was looking to develop myself, so learning and code to copy/modify in one.

By and large the book achieves its aims but misses one or two tricks along the way. The first is security - this is mentioned in one of the final chapters but it would have been better if some simple techniques such as input filtering had been introduced early on along with the reasoning behind them.

Tying PHP to MySQL is the theme of the second part of the book and three approaches are used: the original MySQL extension; MySQLi and PDO. This leads to the second missed opportunity. The code for all three approaches is directly embedded in the HTML, it would have been nice to see an API developed to hide the actual implementation in use. The author's follow on book "PHP: OOP Solutions" does move the code into wrapper functions which effectively abstracts the underlying data model from the presentation.

Despite the above reservations, this book is well worth getting.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

Very good book 12 Feb 2008

By Marc Rigot

I bought this book in December 2006. I bought other books in Php. However, none of them were as good as Php solutions. I agree with the previous comments that is not a bed time book but more an exercise book with very good and useful tutorials. In addition, a good understanding in HTML is expected from the start as stated in the introduction. Most of the tutorials were incoporated into the two websites that I maintained. I still use this book when I got stuck for example when I created an intention to rejoin online form for a sailing club.
One fundamental good point of this book is that the examples are written on classic and advanced PHP. Not all the hosts allow advanced PHP when dealing with database.
I have not given full mark because, although one of the best, it is not perfect. There are a few typos although the amendum are online and are minor. The tutorials synthax could also be improved.
Saying all that, I strongly recommend this book.