[rating:3/5]

Oh, this book seems to have so much going for it. At first, I was going to say that this was one of the most comprehensible computer books I’ve read in a long time (why, oh why can’t computer people write in a manner that is clearly understood to their readers?) – the authors seem to have the rare knack of explaining things clearly. Then, however, I discovered that there are errors in the book and the examples in the book DO NOT match those on the CD. The book also isn’t clear on what needs to be entered, precisely, in order for the examples to match those on the CD. I finally ended up comparing the two in order to make sense of things – this wasted a LOT of my time. Fortunately, my background is such that, so far, I’ve been able to figure things out.

When the problems started, I looked for an errata sheet – both on the publisher’s site (Sam’s Publishing) and on the site provided in the book (http://www.lukelaura.com). Nothing on Sam’s, at all, and the other site is nothing more than an advertisement for the book. Ugh!

This book had so much promise – had a better job been done with editing, it could have easily earned FIVE STARS.

At this point, I’m still able to figure things out and, compared to all of the other books I’ve tried, so far, on PHP and MySQL, this one still makes some sense. Oh well…