DIY Summer Geekdom: Rough Roads with Apress

More education. Less schooliness.

DIY Summer Geekdom: Rough Roads with Apress

In an earlier post, I mentioned beginning Gilmore’s Beginning PHP and MySQL 5, by Apress publishers.

Well, I don’t want to steer anybody wrong, so I’m following up with an update on my progress - or lack thereof.

First, the email the author invited me to send was rejected as spam. A simple Gmail is spam?

Second, the book’s tagline is “From Novice to Professional,” but the instructions for setting up - downloading Apache and PHP - are so cursory I’ve been stuck at that stage for the last few days.

I got around to their forums today to seek help, and discovered problems there, too. They’re full of spam posts, and seem occasionally moderated, at best, to put it generously.

So if any of you out there (Patrick, you mentioned interest) care about these recommendations for personal pursuits of your own, I would recommend Sitepoint books over Apress, so far.

Sitepoint’s books really take pains to make each step clear for their readers - Lloyd’s book did, anyway - and their forums are well-moderated and responsive.

I might be wrong about Apress, and they might come through on the forums. But right now, for user-friendliness to the novice market: Sitepoint: A+ . Apress: D-.

[Update: If anybody can recommend a book they found successful in getting them started with PHP and MySQL, I'd appreciate hearing about it!]

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