In a clear non-patronising and concise manner the author explains to the reader just what Joomla is (a content management system), how to install, add content, administer, design templates and write extensions for it. He touches on SEO and covers the aspects of both deploying Joomla on Windows, Linux and Mac.

While Ken agrees that most of the book was well written and holds the user's hand but there were a few points that surprised him. Included in these was a recommendation for an older version of PHP4 and a disappointment with the chapter on creating extensions.

Published in August 2007, Beginning PHP and Oracle: From Novice to Professional weighs in at a hefty 763 pages long. It's one for the bookshelf, not for the backpack thats for sure!

He goes through the sections of the book - the PHP intro, some of its "Enterprise thinking", mentions of MySQL and SQLite and, of course, the large amount of Oracle content (both in using Oracle alone and in connecting the two together).

If you're in the market for a book to perhaps learn PHP and would like to move onto advanced concepts later on, this book is worth a look. If you're an experienced PHP developer and looking for an introduction into the world of Oracle, this is the book for you.

Walking through your local bookstore will show that there is definitely no shortage of books related to PHP and MySQL. These ubiquitous technologies have been many a beginner's foray into the world of web development. Since both are free and widely supported it's a safe bet that the software you create can be used in almost any circumstance with relative ease. Beginning PHP and MySQL: From Novice to Professional, Third Edition is a good resource to get you started on your way.

The reviewer breaks down the chapters of the book and points out two chapters (web services and MVC with the Zend Framework) that he though were noteworthy for budding developers to look in to.

All in all W. Jason Gilmore has done an excellent job of bringing a wide ranging topics into a manageable size and retaining much of the value for later use.

While the concept of Ajax contains a handy set of functionality for creating actions on the fly, if you are not making use of its ability to connect to the server, you are really just using basic JavaScript. Not that there is anything truly wrong with that, but the real power lies in joining the client-side functionality of JavaScript with the server-side processing of the PHP language using the concept of Ajax.

The article's pretty light on the code, but it does give a full example of showing and hiding dynamic content pulled from a backend PHP script (calendar information). Outside of that they just discuss general topics like "Why PHP and Ajax?" and the difference between client-side and server-side processing.

My friend Jason Gilmore is selling his popular book (which I also happen to be the tech reviewer of), "Beginning PHP and MySQL 5, Second Edition" via his company website for just $26.99 + $3.50 S/H, which to my knowledge is the lowest price anywhere.

You can check out more about the book and get the full details on how to order from this post over on Jason's blog. Offer is only available only to U.S. residents due to cost restrictions.

Although no stranger to Ajax, I received a review copy of Beginning Ajax with PHP expecting some watered down presentation of Javascript with some PHP thrown in. I was quite surprised to find a good presentation of using Ajax and PHP, easy enough for the beginner and still interesting for those who have done it for years.

Nola covers the contents of the book, generalizing the sections just to give you a brief overview of what's going on in each chapter. She also describes the end of the book as a "random splattering of interesting topics" dealing with using Ajax in different, useful situations.

A couple of months ago, I knew almost nothing about PHP, only that is was a programming language that I needed to learn. Today, my whole site relies upon PHP and I have gained the confidence that almost anything is possible using PHP. I accomplished this achievement using methods that I will describe in this article.

The author talks about the methods followed to get into the language, including making smaller goals at first, just to get used to things. The manual is also suggested as a "best friend" for a developer and looking at other people's code can provide insight into your problems.