The full title of this book is Codin’ for the Web: A Designer’s Guide to Developing Dynamic Web Sites and that is an accurate description of the content of this book. The author also wrote Stylin’ with CSS: A Designer’s Guide. With this book he completes the loop. In the first book, he showed you how to make your site look good with style sheets divorced from the code. In the most recent books, he walks you through an education on how to use the php scripting language to create full-featured dynamic page websites.

The book is well designed with full screenshots and code lists. The code is available for download. This is always appreciated, as it avoids the tedious practice of writing code from a book page during the learning process.

The book starts at the most basic level with an introduction to php and a simple explanation of the syntax of statements, variables, operators, etc.

Chapter 1 introduces the reader to coding principles. Variable types, functions, control loops, and much more are comprehensively covered. By the end of this chapter, the student has the knowledge and tools to write well-designed php code.

Chapter 2 deals with forms processing. The author covers input forms and data verification for completeness, correctness, and security. Creating, reading, and writing flat files is covered.

Chapter 3 covers creating a mysql database. The code examples show how to add, modify, delete, select, and retrieve data. This is a good introduction to the power of the combination of php and mysql.

Chapter 4 continues using the database material to begin designing a content management system with the creation of database tables and the necessary administration section or back-end of the site. Style sheets and editing functions are covered.

Chapter 5 deals with cookies, sessions and authentication. These are necessary to limit access to areas of the site and to track visitors. The chapter provides sample code for a members-only site.

Chapter 6 extensively covers building a website with php. The value of include files for effective site maintenance and modification. Best practices for site navigation and creating dynamic page titles have their own sections.

This book is highly recommended as a beginner/intermediate level introduction to building dynamic websites with php/mysql. No book can give complete coverage, but this one will take you a long way, and the author does a good job of pointing you to where to get more information. All of this in a visually pleasing, well-designed book makes this a book you’ll want to add to your library.