Stefan Mischook has posted a new introductory video for those just starting out with SQL in their PHP scripts - a look at using a (MySQL) database.

I've finally released my first video on using SQL statements in PHP pages. This is the next step after connecting to a MySQL database. I hope you find the videos useful.

The video looks at the "big four" - insert, update, delete and select, but focuses on the select statements and how to use them with function like mysql_fetch_assoc and mysql_fetch_array to get the results out of your database.

DevShed has a new tutorial today that's part two in a series looking at working with the combination of PHP and MySQL - "Working with PHP and MySQL".

You'll learn how to select the database, fetch and display data, and more. This article is excerpted from chapter 9 of Learning PHP and MySQL, written by Michele Davis and Jon Phillips.

They start by selecting the database before moving on to the query. With a select query, they grab the information from the books tablw and display it out to the page (fetching with both a mysql_fetch_row and mysql_fetch_array).

From Cclair.nl, there's a new post sharing some code that's been created in an effort to make a "more modern CAPTCHA".

"ModernCaptcha" is a simple script in order to prevent spam in a very user friendly way. In a few words, your visitors don't have to type some characters as you see on the most websites, the verification is made by choosing the company name belonging to the logo that is show.

It's an interesting approach, but, as one reader pointed out, bots has a one in five chance of guessing correctly. That's way less than with a more standard image manipulation CAPTCHA method. I'm not sure I'd want to use it on my sites, but it might be good for a smaller site.

There's a demo of the end result and a download of the latest version as well as some limited support provided in the comments of the post.

John Mertic's made even more updates to the Windows installer he's been working on - this time, he's enhanced the install with a web server selection tool.

I've updated the Installer with the following changes:

• Added a dedicated dialog for selecting your Web Server
• Moved the dialog to pick the Apache conf folder into the installer itself

There's also a screenshot of this new feature to give you an idea of what the support will look like. This latest update can be downloaded here.

With a continuation of their previous article, WebReference has posted part two of their "How to Interact with Web Forms" series - an excerpt from the PHP Phrasebook (Sams).

They build on the previous code, showing how to:

• preselect items from a multiple select list,
• process image submit buttons
• checking the mandatory fields
• checking the values of select lists

They wrap it all up with two handy concepts - how to write out your data to a form and send it off in email form to the location of your choosing and working with the files uploaded via a form.