tizag and w3schools are best for begginers.. if you want video tutorials then lynda.com provides good tutorials
w3schools is the best place for beginners who want to learn web development. They teach you html, css, javascript, php and a lot more in a very-easy-to-understand way. The most important thing when you want to learn a programming language is practice. If you already know some other scripting language such as Perl, Python, ASP, etc. It is a very good exercise to re-code in PHP. This is a great website for programming practicing: www dot spoj dot pl
The best best best way to learn php or any programming language is to buy a good book. For php I would recommend "PHP in a nutshell" by Paul Hudson. Then choose something you want to make that is at least semi complex but do able. I written an arcade script, it really helped with my learning php, html, css and now I've got my own arcade script that I can do what I want with.
http://www.web-design-wiki.com its like Wikipedia with lessons in all web site designing tutorial and much more its in an easy and professional way
Learn to use the php documentation, it is one of the best programming language documentations I've seen. Some books can mislead you!
Come up with a project and do the research to learn how to implement it. Reading books is fine but you have to apply knowledge to really get good at anything.
if you have base of c or c++ then your PHP go more easily so i suggest you to learn them first ... and then try some video tutorials it would help...
some related questions to the OP as I am in the same boat: ( please tell me if i need to start a separate thread for this and I will do it gladly ) 1) What's the average learning curve to get a good grasp over PHP & MySQL ? ( Supposing i can spare 2 hours / day ) ( I know only HTML, CSS ) 2) Can I design simple e-commerce websites ( from templates ) with only dreamweaver? Or would I need to learn OSCommerce / Zencart too in addition to PHP & MySQL Thanks in advance. Great forum !