I've learned easily enough via the Internet and all classes near me are horribly over priced. ($800 for 20 hrs... that works to $40/hr, with 30 students per class is $1200/hr they're making off us!)
A good suggestion is get a nice PHP tool that helps you develop, it's worth it's weight in gold. Especially if it has a 'beautify' button!
I would recommend www.phpdesigner.dk - It has a trial if you need to test it.
I tried using coffeecup editor before but my trial has expired...I amplanning tocontinue self study.. howlong doyou think will it take before I can create a simple scripted site?
I usually recommend "php for dummies". It is a quick and BS free book. Then just go from there. It teaches the basics "the right way". Then work up to cookbooks, xml, regex, etc. But a firm foundation is most important.
I would recommend against 'PHP for Dummies' (especially via Bittorrent.) - I had a flick through it at my local bookstore and it seemed to teach fairly bad standards.
I looked through just a chapter or two and saw continous references to arrays like so:
$array[key] and (from what I read) didn't mention data validation at all.
