Travelling an hour and a half to reach the nearest computer bookshop is one of my earliest memories of getting started with PHP. After the first visit to the bookshop, I would make it a point to go there every month. Most of the pocket money I would get from my parents and aunt were spent on books and music CDs.

I don’t remember much about the book that got me started with PHP, but I remember it was a book published by Oreilly. Programming PHP and MySQL

Every time I was asked how I learnt PHP, my answer was always to read that book. The joy of going through the book is nothing I have experienced as I try out the digital courses these days. My courses joined vs completed ratio on udemy stands at 14:0.

Other books I remember reading when I got started.

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites

Head First PHP & MySQL

High Performance Web Sites

Head First JavaScript Programming

PHP & MySQL: Novice to Ninja, 6th Edition - Reader