Reddit mentions of PHP Solutions: Dynamic Web Design Made Easy

PHP Solutions by David Powers was really good imo. I learned PHP in about a week with it. Helped me learn a bit about SQL, HTML, and CSS too.

This was the first PHP book that I ever read (previous version) and it will point you in the right direction. One thing I will recommend, the book offers most tutorials using MySQLi or PDO. ALWAYS do the PDO version, it is a much more current and secure standard. Don't worry if you don't know what that means, you will :)

The book covers creating records and some image manipulation. It is built around a fictional travel site, but you will be able to learn from that and reapply to that the building a CMS.

I don't know if this will help, but this is the method I took (I have a background in graphic design, marketing, and advertising). I first went to some hacker friends who are very good at what they do and showed them all kinds of mockups, illustrations, and venn diagrams, everything about how everything would work. I even wrote out the logic for some of my algorithims in plain english.

Their response: they thought it was an interesting idea, but being the awesome programmers that they were, they had very high paying jobs, and their own side jobs, so they didn't have time to work on my project. They did however give me some great advice: (Note I already knew css and html) They said start with these 3 books:
Jquery Novice to Ninja which really helped me get started with basic animation techniques and understand a bit of Jquery. This really helped me lead into javascript programming with Dom Scripting. This book was great for really fleshing out what the jquery was doing, and helped me with a lot of other questions. I feel very comfortable working in jquery and javascript now. The last book they recommended for me was php solutions to teach me about teh back end of what I wanted to build.

Now learning on my own with just a couple books, stackoverflow, and a few questions sent to my friends/mentors was not easy by any means, but I don't regret it for a second.

Some might not like my choices of using jquery, javascript, or php, but one of the reasons my friends recommended me using those languages in particular was how much documentation is readily available, making them a little easier then some other launguages to learn on your own.

Good luck to you.

I started with Head First PHP & MySQL when I started years ago. Two books I loved the most though were Beginning PHP and MySQL From Novice to Professional and PHP Solutions Dynamic Web Design Made Easy.

Later this book helped me immensely PHP Objects, Patterns, and Practice.

Ultimately, php.net is your bible and you can learn everything from there alone. Post on forums and ask for help. Try something and stick with it, don't jump around creating dozens of projects but stick with one and expand it.

Also this