Reddit reviews Learning PHP, MySQL & JavaScript: With jQuery, CSS & HTML5 (Learning Php, Mysql, Javascript, Css & Html5)

Oh, this? https://smile.amazon.com/Learning-PHP-MySQL-JavaScript-Javascript/dp/1491918667/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1494675895&sr=8-1

You've chosen an interesting time to pick up web development! /u/GruntildaJr left an excellent guide on learning front end development, but as a back-end developer I wanted to chime in for the other half.

Learning back-end development without an internet connection will be a little more difficult, but certainly not impossible nor any more effort than a few hours of getting things configured. Nearly any web server can be hosted on your personal machine without an internet connection. Apache is my personal choice and likely one of the easiest to setup on Windows, but Nginx is a lot of fun and there's plenty of options.

Here is a fairly straight forward tutorial for setting up a local development environment on Windows. Although the writer suggests using Zend Eclipse as an editor and I would have to point you towards PHPStorm or Atom with a linter and autocomplete plugin. That said, Eclipse will serve you fine. After completing the tutorial you will have PHP, MySQL, PHPMyAdmin, and Apache set up and running. While not especially fancy, these are the basic tools to start learning the ins and outs of back-end development.

As for learning materials, I love Learning PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript and PHP The Right Way. If you want something very beginner friendly and a bit easier to read, PHP Pandas is a good option.

Of the three, PHP The Right Way will be the biggest challenge. It moves quickly and takes you the furtherest, if you haven't programmed before I wouldn't recommend starting with it but I would recommend going through it after you've gotten some experience under your belt. The O'Reilly book is good for walking through a stack of technologies and outlining how they interact to make a full website, while PHP Pandas is a more thorough dive into the language itself (and it's a lot less painful to slog through if you don't like textbooks). All three are excellent and stand well on their own. If you can only select a single one though, I'd highly recommend the O'Reilly book.

A good companion for any more formal book is the Learn X In Y Minutes PHP Page. It's a little one page cheat sheet to reference when you forget something like the syntax for a switch statement or why you should use double instead of single quotes. There's also a bunch of other languages including JavaScript and I've found them all incredibly helpful. Zeal, as mentioned by GruntildaJr is also a great asset, and it contains the pages for PHP.

There are back-end languages other than PHP along with plenty of frameworks and libraries to explore and learn. I don't want to make it sound as if PHP is your only choice, or the best choice for a back-end language. I do think that it is one of the best choices for a back-end language when you take the learning offline, though. There is a wealth of offline literature, I only linked a few books but the market is simply saturated with PHP texts. The language also stands easily on its own, and for the most part the texts treat it as such. You won't constantly be needing to "pip install" or "npm install" like you do with Python and Node.js.

I hope all of that was of some help, it can be a hump to get over that initial setup but afterwards the learning is much more rewarding. Happy developing and godspeed!

Work on your code/portfolio in your spare time and apply to any job that interests you.

In terms of how to improve your code, I'd take a look at these resources:

HTML/CSS

• http://learn.shayhowe.com/html-css/
  
• http://learn.shayhowe.com/advanced-html-css/
  
  Javascript
  
  
• http://javascriptbook.com/
  
  PHP/MySQL
  
  
• http://www.amazon.co.uk/Learning-PHP-MySQL-JavaScript-Javascript/dp/1491918667
  
  Or look online for any good resources for whatever technology you want to get into.
  
  Good luck :)

this book and this:

hash('ripemd128', $salt1.$password.$salt2);

The previous edition from 2012 recommended md5.

I guess having a unique salt for each password using password_hash is better than applying the same to all of them. Not sure if ripemd128 is good or not.

As far as training goes I am a trainee myself so I don't know how much help I can provide. Since you seem pretty new to all this (with the most positive meaning) here are some points I can give you and I hope others will correct me where I am wrong.

• Learn the basics of each language. You need HTML, CSS3 and Javascript. Those cover the front end. Especially for Javascript I hear good words for this book http://eloquentjavascript.net/. That codewars site you using will help you cement the basics of the language but don't spend very long time in that.
  
  
• For back end you seem to have chosen PHP. I would complement with some knowledge of SQL. Especially data relationships, database normalization, joins etc.
  
  
• After you have the basics down then look for frameworks. Frameworks are essentially blueprints of web applications. The important decisions are made for you and you must fill your business logic. They will reduce a lot of work. These are what I know to be popular. Since I don't use them there might be other options
  
  
  
  
• HTML + CSS -> Foundation, Bootstrap
  
• Javascript -> JQuery, Angualar, React and an ocean of others. For now I think JQuery will suffice
  
• PHP -> https://laravel.com/ or maybe a CMS like drupal. I don't know which would be best. Lavarel would require more code from you but the result will be closer to your needs. Drupal is more point and clicky, maybe will get you there faster but it is a more out of the box solution. Both will abstract a lot of SQL for you.
  
  
• Validation: You can do it in both Javascript and PHP. In Javascript validation will enhance your users experience while in the PHP it is essential for your site's security and your data integrity. In back end I would say validation is mandatory while in front end you can skip it for now, according to your needs.
  
  Most important: Go to github.com and seek for projects doing what you want to do preferably with the frameworks you choose. Then read their code and try to understand what they do.
  
  PS: If you haven't done any serious reading so far I would recommend this book. https://www.amazon.com/Learning-PHP-MySQL-JavaScript-Javascript/dp/1491918667
  It is a bit outdated but it is packed with good advice to get you started. The rest you can learn by googling.

Hhm. Well, first of all, I think you might have a hard time finding a book that will teach about both design and web development. Each of those are complicated enough to write separate books on. I think you'll be better off by finding two separate books (one on web dev, one on design) than finding one that combines both.

A kind of the same goes for Web. Dev. This is such a broad term, that you will hardly find any book that tries to cram in every possible aspect of web development. If you are a bit more specific and focus on a specific technology (like NodeJS, ASP.net with Angular or just plain old PHP, MySQL and JavaScript ) you'll get more value for money. There are more generic books out there, but the technologies (especially for web dev) change almost daily and books simply can't keep up with that. If you'd ask me, I think you'll be much better off having a good understanding of JavaScript in general before you move on to a specific stack or framework.

The only book I can think of that covers all of those technologies is Learning PHP, mySQL, and Javascript. Of course, since it is trying to cover a multitude of different topics it never really goes "in-depth" with any of them. But it could be a good place to start out.