Stuart Herbert has posted his review of a book from Packt Publishing covering one of the most popular PHP-based database administration packages out there, phpMyAdmin, "Mastering phpMyAdmin 2.11 for Effective MySQL Management".

Mastering phpMyAdmin 2.11 for Effective MySQL Management by Marc Delisle is the third edition of this book, and it follows the usual pattern of Packt Publishing books. The book has clearly defined objectives on the cover, and it follows a clear progression of its chosen subject from start to end. It is well presented, with a clear layout and clean page design that makes it easy to read.

Stuart gives a high-level overview of both phpMyAdmin ("it feels like phpMyAdmin as been around forever") and the book with an index of the topics covered.

Rob Allen has posted his review of another PHP-related book from Packt Publishing, "Object-oriented Programming with PHP5":

Packt Publishing recently sent me a couple of books to review, so let's start with Object-Oriented Programming with PHP5 by Hasin Hayder. According to the introduction, the book is intended for beginners to intermediate PHP5 programmers and the first chapter has a good introduction to what object oriented programming is and why you would want to use it.

He glosses over the first few chapters of the book (introductory stuff mostly) and points out three others specifically - Chapter 5 covering reflection and unit testing, Chapter 6 covering the SPL and Chapter 9 dealing with SimpleXML and DOM.

Rob Allen has posted a review of the Packt Publishing book "Learning PHP Data Objects" over on his blog today:

Packt Publishing recently sent me a couple of books to review. This post is about the second one I received, Learning PHP Data Objects by Dennis Popel. I was excited to receive this book as PDO underlies a lot of the Zend_Db_Adapter objects that I use in my day to day programming. It seemed like a good idea that I should know more about it.

He provides some good detail of what the book covers (chapter by chapter) as well as a summary including his recommendation for who should use the book and how they can best enjoy its contents.

Ken Guest has reviewed one of the PHP offerings from Packt Publishing and written by Hasin Hayder - Object-oriented Programming with PHP5.

Putting the aspects of Hayder's grasp of the English language aside, the book is rather good as an introduction to the various technologies that it covers.

He points out a few things of note - the beginner OOP chapters (only made for the newbies out there), the contents of the main OOP chapter and the good section on PHPUnit and unit testing. He also has a few suggestions of things that could make the book a bit better, including a personal suggestion on code formating and braces.

PHPClasses.org has posted a review of a new PHP-related book from Packt Publishing, "Building Websites with Joomla! 1.5":

This book is a tutorial guide to Joomla! 1.5. It was written and published during the development of Joomla! 1.5. It is intended for Web developers, designers, Web masters, content editors and marketing professionals. It is suitable for anyone starting out with Joomla! 1.5, for people who upgrade to Joomla! 1.5, and for those who just want have a good printed manual at hand.

R.L. (the reviewer) goes through some of the chapters, detailing their content including some of the software mentioned in them (like Fireboard and DOCman). He recommends the book to anyone looking for a good in-hand Joomla! resource but notes that a chapter on security would have been a nice addition.

Kae Verens has posted a new book review of one of Packt Publising's latest PHP-related offerings, "Mastering phpMyAdmin 2.11 for Effective MySQL Management":

In short, my review is this: overall, the book detailed everything I can think of (and more) about phpMyAdmin - I learned about some features in phpMyAdmin that I was not already aware of. I would ask for less screenshots, more how-tos and less 3rd-person speech for the next revision, but if there are any questions I have about phpMyAdmin, the answer is in this book.

The review gets into more detail about the book - its structure, the wealth of content in it (including some unknown features) and a few things that could have been better. Kae mentions a few places where the author "forgets that the reader does not know the subject" and gets a bit too technical too fast. The screenshots, while good in moderation, overpowered parts of the chapters and made them harder to follow.

PHPClasses.org has posted a new book review today. It's a look at another of Hasin Hayder's books, this one published by Packt - Object-Oriented Programming with PHP5 (as reviewed by Ryan Partington).

"Object Oriented Programming with PHP5" is a book that helps understanding many of the core OOP features within PHP, whilst looking at the Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern and unit testing.

Ryan comments of a few issues he found with the book include the not-quite-an-introduction-level first chapter and the "More OOP" section that read like a copy of the php.net manual. Overall, though, his opinion is that it's a good book and provides a good overview of database functionality and the MVC design pattern.

Ivo Jansch has posted his review of the php|architect book about the Zend Framework by Cal Evans:

Before I voice my opinion, a disclaimer: I have met Cal personally; in fact I'm having diner with him next Monday, I'm writing a book for php|architect, and my company is a Zend partner. I could not be any more biased. If you still trust my judgement (and I will try to remain objective), read on.

Ivo mentions the important things - like how fun the book is to read (a book about a framework, who knew?) and what sort of things it covers. Components of the framework are mentioned but so are things like caching, layouts and web services. I'd give away the ending but that wouldn't be any fun so go check out his unbiased opinion of hos the book turned out.

The PHPClasses.org website has a new book review of SitePoint's latest PHP-related release, "The PHP Anthology: 101 Essential Tips":

As PHP developers, we commonly resort to browsing the Web for people with similar programming problems. Now that we have The PHP Anthology, why should we? While the book certainly does not cover everything, there is something for everyone, and even the few sections you find useful make it all worthwhile.

He talks about the book's target audience, the quality of the examples it provides and some of his suggestions on how the book could have been even better.

The Zend Developer Zone has posted a review of a new book from Packt Publishing that introduces you to the Joomla! content management system and how to create your own bits of functionality for it - Mastering Joomla! 1.5 - Extension and Framework Development.

Planning to write a few extensions for site's I host I was looking for a book that could at least in part be a replacement for this documentation. As I went through the site of Pact publishing My eye fell on this particular book because of the example chapter they show. And indeed now I have the book I'm in no way disappointed.

He mentions the target audience of the book (and how well it hits it), the approach the book takes to the topics it covers and specific looks at several of the chapter topics like web services, error handling, security and plug-in structure.