Frustrated PHP Newbie!!!

After years of relying on programmers i have come to the conclusion that i need to learn the basics of php.

I have purchased the Learning php5 book by o'reilly.

Is this a good place to start learning.

Can any one tell me whether or not this is a good book to use as i hate reading ebooks online and prefer paper based education.

Thanks

 

Then get the paper based one, that's how I learned.

 

My favorite PHP book was "PHP and MySQL Web Development" by Luke Welling and Laura Thomson.

 

Do you think that "PHP and MySQL Web Development" is better than the o'reilly book.

I want to focus on one book,learn the basics and then hopefully (if the wife allows me!) get more involved.

 

I love your http://www.gpsreview.net site by the way.Did you program yourself or use an out of the box solution like wordpress and tweak it?

 

I have not read the O'Reilly book so I can't really compare. My GPS site is based on WordPress. I built the theme and there is also a lot of custom plugins I wrote for ad management and product specifications.

 

Is it easy to tweak the ad management programs? And are the affiliate program you using bringing in good money as opposed to adsense

Please forgive me if question is too personal

 

The ad management does what I need to since I wrote it. The other programs do work fairly well.

 

I learned PHP with online tutorials. But that's not something you like doing...
Although it was a necessity for me.

Secondly the best I like about learning online is I get codes which I can immediately copy paste and see results. Less typing.