Book Review + Giveaway Of PHP For Absolute Beginners (2 copies)
Saad Bassi
In today’s web development scenario, it is very necessary for a web developer to know how to code in PHP. PHP has become a major language in web development industry in last few years. From WordPress to FaceBook everything is coded in PHP language.
Recently we came to a book named PHP for Absolute Beginners which is a must read for beginners.
Today we are going to review the book and guess what? We have 2 free copies of book to give you free of cost. I wish that it would have been there when I was learning PHP. Anyways After buying the book, I read it and the book was something more than awesome.
About the Author
The book is written by Jason Lengstorf who is a self taught PHP developer. He is an experienced voice in PHP and web development. If you are a regular reader of some famous blogs like Smashing Magazine and CSS-Tricks then you might came to tutorials written by him. He is also co-author of the famous CSS-Tricks series “Creating a web app from scratch”. You can read his extensive interview by me here.
Inside the Book
Jason starts the book with how to install PHP on your computer and then leads you throughout the way to building up your own blog system with user comments. Rather than wasting the first chapter on the history of programming and PHP, how it came and other theoretical stuff, he tells the readers how to install xampp on your local computer for better development. I have read about 5-6 books on PHP and it was my habit to skip the first chapter of book, first time I read the starting chapter of book.
Why we liked the book?
The book is an example of a phrase, less theory, more coding. Jason teaches PHP with a lot of sample tutorials and examples. You will not read chapters and chapters of theory but you will learn best practices to do in the coding, and many pro tips which should be kept in mind when coding in PHP.
The Giveaway
We have got two copies of PHP for absolute beginners for the giveaway. We are very thankful to Jason Lengstorf and the publishers of book APRESS Publishers for supporting this giveaway.
How to enter in the giveaway?
Pretty simple, you have to leave a comment on the post and tell us what you want to see on 1stwebdesigner, or how we can make the website better. We will use random.org to pick the winners. The giveaway is open till 11:59pm GMT+5, February 18th 2010.
Grab the book right now
If you don’t like waiting for the result of giveaway, you can buy the book here through Amazon.com service. What we can assure you that this book is definitely worth your money.
Good Luck!
*Update by Dainis Graveris
Seeing all those amazing suggestions and comments changed my mind about randomized pick! We will choose winners with the most thoughtful, interesting and best answer! I just love to see how you drop down all the weak points of 1stwebdesigner site! I love you for that, and I am definitely thinking about new design, which will be very well researched and carefully put together to fix all problems, usability bugs we have here!
Give us more feedback! Completely inspired!
Update
The Giveaway is closed now.
Winners are Terri Lockerridge and Mark Anderson.
Thanks for your feedback and suggestions.
For Further Reading:
Did you enjoy this article and found it useful?
Get even more from us:
DesignLovr
Posted 726 days ago 60I would love to participate in your giveaway.
I think you should publish more in-depth tutorials.
.-= DesignLovr´s last blog ..Beautiful Photoshop-like Buttons with CSS3 =-.
Silviya
Posted 726 days ago 59More about CSS3 and HTML5 would be nice. But overall the site is very good and educational.
George Argyrakis
Posted 726 days ago 58Hello,
Firstly I would like to congratulate you for your good job.
Secondly, I think that you should add some extra tutorials for designing webpages.
Good luck to everyone.
Cheers
George
Dale Stouffer
Posted 726 days ago 57Actually a second comment, when I clicked on my name which had the link to my company’s website the link opened my site in your window. You might consider changing this link to show: target=”_blank” to that you don’t lose readers who click to other folks’ websites. Just another suggestion. TTFN.
.-= Dale Stouffer´s last blog ..Is Your Business Website Going To Make It? =-.
Dale Stouffer
Posted 726 days ago 56Well, in terms of your give away, I’m interested in getting one of your free copies of your book. In reading through the responses above, I see some similar things touched upon that were useful. Hopefully you’ll find my suggestions helpful as well. My suggestions touch on SEO.
1. You have a fair amount of images on your site that don’t have alt tags. Get em in there.
2. Most website owners don’t SEO their contact us page – you should do this – it is a missed opportunity for another page to be found etc.
3. From what I have been taught, read, etc. you have a redundant phrase: “Graphic and Web Design Blog -Resources and Tutorials on many of your titles of your pages in the static part of your site which should be removed from all titles except one page. Most likely the front page is a good place to keep it.
That’s probably enough suggestions for now. Thanks for the opportunity to contribute.
.-= Dale Stouffer´s last blog ..Is Your Business Website Going To Make It? =-.
Terri Lockerridge
Posted 726 days ago 55Thank you for the invitation to leave a suggestion for something I would like to see more of here and everywhere else that is mainly a tutorial type learning site.
I notice that most of the time the sites that offer the how to’s on some really awesome web site “how to” tutorials. But none of you use that type of thing yourselves. This page is pretty plain you will have to agree. There are lots and lots of ads all over it. But they are not very colorful, nor do they even have the interactive hover or cursor chase to get our attentions.
I am just curious as to why? The content is top notch, the language gets a bit computerlish every once in a while .. with the photo shop tutorials.. but mostly I. and many other amateurs, who are just on the net for the fun of it all, can understand and put the information to use hands on, ourselves.
That is the most important aspect I suppose, but … what is up with the white backgrounds and the Windows blue plain headers with a single row of buttons that work.. and work very well, but are not an example of what your showing us how to accomplish ourselves.
What holds you back? Just really curious why you stick with plain when you shout out fancy stuff to the crowd?
Thanks for the contest and hopefully I might become lucky enough to have a chance at this one.. I am nothing if not random.
terri
Saad Bassi
Posted 723 days ago 97Congrats on winning Terri. We are already thinking of redesigning 1stWebDesigner. We will try to roll put the interactive, jQuery enhanced design this time.:)
Shyndoway
Posted 726 days ago 54First of all great website as a beginner in web design I love it.
I think that more tutorials would make this website one of the most ruling websites. It already has great content that I get inspired by and to be able to learn to do what I see more would be great.
Thanks for the giveaway hope I win
Shyndoway
WhisperiN
Posted 726 days ago 51Hello Dear Saad,
I’d like to thank you for this opportunity.
Well, what I’d like to see (or to see more), is the Java, jQuery, AJAX and so related topics, hints and tricks.!!
Hope, my luck drives me to a winner here :D
Regards..
Kevin
Posted 726 days ago 50Great site. Personally, I’d like to see more written tutorials. Keep up the good work.
Etienne Richard
Posted 726 days ago 49Still working in ASP, it’s been a long time since I want to learn the PHP language. I would say that your site is going well. Maybe you could add some subdivised categories at the bottom of the pages. I’m now following the blog, good continuation !
Eric azares
Posted 726 days ago 48This is a very comprehensive website! I’d like to see more case studies for specific types of websites in different industries. This may go beyond just the ‘style’ and cover more regarding common functionalities that occur in typical ‘x’ sites. Would be great to see the workflow of designs from start to finish ! ;)
.-= Eric azares´s last blog ..ericazares: This actually sounds like an cool topic: RT @JayDolan Please vote for me to speak at ignite raleigh! http://j.mp/dx9g0t =-.
Max
Posted 726 days ago 47today I went through the rss posts and I managed to open almost every post from 1stwebdesigner. Actually it is a well developed site with tons of usefull info.
Chris
Posted 726 days ago 46It would be nice to see a section for SEO.
Overall I think this site is well developed.
I have learned many things here.
John
Posted 726 days ago 45I’m more of a beginner, so I really like how-to articles and code snippets (jQuery, for example) that allow me to toy around and figure things out. Great site! Keep up the good work!
ycz87
Posted 726 days ago 44How to make 1stWebDesigner better?
In my opinion, there should be more sample of present design of web, more collections of trendy web design interfaces from Deviantart.com, more useful and pretty jquery plugins, issues of CSS in different browses, and some CSS framework.
You should also introduce some PHP & Zend Framework, But not too much, because this is a website for designer.
Thank you!
mirinel
Posted 726 days ago 43Hello Saad Bassi! I would like to see more WordPress related articles on 1stwebdesigner (hackes, themes, tutorials etc). Hope that brings me a win.
Aaron
Posted 726 days ago 42I think one direction you may think of going is to discuss the best ways to build a complicated site (such as dealing with slicing of images, image sizes, layout of information, margin issues, specialized menus, etc.) Thanks for all the hard work!
Nicole Foster
Posted 726 days ago 41I really hope I can win this because I have been trying to learn PHP so I can create useful web applications and WordPress (I can learn that from a different book though). I have had a hard time because there are few to no tutorials about web applications and the ones about them are not very detailed for beginners.
Margie Jordan
Posted 726 days ago 40Possibly more HTML articles and maybe some interesting web design case studies.
Gonzo the Great
Posted 726 days ago 39Hi Saad,
good and nice give-away!
How could you get this blog even better …? For me personally that means more about SEO (you’re last post about SEO in WP was great), less about buttons in CSS3 or jQuery-posts (we’ve seen those enough!).
More about blogging, not how to code or what theme you should get, no, a bit more personal stories behind the scenes (advertizing, social media, boosting traffic, etc.). More about social networking and email marketing, etc.
Hope I could have been of some assistance? You could too, .. I want this book, hihi, LOL!
.-= Gonzo the Great´s last blog ..Tweet-Parade (#06 & 07 – February 2010) =-.
Saad Bassi
Posted 726 days ago 53Regarding blogging, here on 1stwebdesigner, We have an exclusive gift for all the bloggers in upcoming days.Stay tuned.:)
Nick Parsons
Posted 726 days ago 38Great! Apress is an excellent publishing company and Jason is an excellent developer, so I’d love to have his book!
As far as improvements, I’d love to see more concrete, real-life development tuts like the one you published on Setting Up WordPress for SEO (that was good).
Thanks for having this giveaway!
.-= Nick Parsons´s last blog ..5 Steps to an Effective Freelancing Schedule =-.
Saad Bassi
Posted 726 days ago 52Thanks for your input Nick. We will try to act upon your suggestions.
Yamil Gonzales
Posted 726 days ago 37I would like to read more about programming logic, I mean it’s cool to follow tutorials and “step-by-step” articles but in real life you encounter some out of line situations.
Thanks, I really hope I can get a copy of the book; I need it.
Dominic
Posted 726 days ago 36I’d like to see more articles with collections to free design resources such as CSS templates, icons and frameworks. Although you do a good job of providing these now, there’s always room for more.
Keep up the good work
Kyle
Posted 727 days ago 35I would like to see more CSS3 and html5 since they are on the up and coming! WordPress is huge too so articles on that is much appreciated
Thanks!
Ric
Posted 727 days ago 34I’d like to know a little more about web programming, move towards development from my actual porfession as a designer, anything that can help during the transition would be appreciated.
.-= Ric´s last blog ..Defining Value =-.