The killer combination of PHP, MySQL database, and the Apache web server is by far the most popular set of dynamic web technologies in use today. But not everyone who uses PHP is a programmer. Unlike code-heavy references, this book provides a more friendly, accessible and visual learning style. It takes the reader through the details of setting up their development environment and PHP code basics as painlessly as possible, and shows how to wire together several real world PHP projects. The PHP code offered here generates semantically-sound markup, which is then attractively styled using CSS. The book is up-to-date with the latest versions of PHP (6) and MySQL (5) but is written to be compatible with older versions that readers might find on their hosting servers. Security is very important for effective PHP sites, but often overlooked by beginners. This book teaches security right from the start.