2Start off your web development journey the right way with this beginner-friendly introduction to PHP programming.

This book will take you from beginner-level to professional PHP programming, through hundreds of in-depth examples and hands-on exercises. You'll explore best practices for developing fast, secure, and easy-to-maintain websites, while establishing a broad foundation of programming knowledge and experience.

You'll learn how to:

• Create consistent, modern-looking web pages with easily customizable templates by combining dynamic PHP scripts, static HTML code, and Bootstrap styling
  
• Write server-side scripts for responding to HTTP requests, processing forms, and validating data
  
• Use browser sessions to implement shopping carts and user logins, and to store other user data
  
• Write scripts that can communicate with MySQL and other PDO databases, enabling database-driven, data-rich web applications
  
• Implement modern, best-practice website security, including user data sanitization, session-based logins using hashed passwords, and database prepared statements
  
• Save time with up-to-date, professional, open-source tools, including Composer dependency management and the Twig templating library
  

As you follow along, you'll learn real-life patterns and modern programming techniques for creating, extending, and modifying web applications, all using the powerful PHP language.