Your comments also confirm to me that hand-coding is necessary to implement a quality database-driven site – This is really valuable to me because I wasn’t sure if I was making it harder than it needs to be (by hand-coding thus far in the Notepad++ text-editor instead of using a more graphical tool). However I will look into PhpED and Zend since they specifically help with PHP coding.

On a somewhat separate topic: I’ll need to implement a shopping cart and credit-card payment processing for my site. Is it possible to do this all with PHP and MySQL? Are there particular things to watch out for in coding the shopping cart? If this is especially complex to do (and as I’m new to Web programming), is there a good reference book or two on coding a Web shopping cart that you can point me to?
Thanks again.
Kevin

The problem with Dreamweaver is that the code it generates automatically only scratches the surface of what PHP is capable of. The big mistake that many people make is to think that Dreamweaver will “do everything” for them. It won’t, and in my Dreamweaver books, I stress the need to be able to hand-code. Without that skill, your ability to develop database-driven websites will be severely limited.

So, should you get Dreamweaver or go for a different IDE? It really depends on your goals. If you want to concentrate on developing the back-end of database-driven sites, then PhpED or Zend Studio is probably a better choice. If you are also involved in designing the front end of websites, then Dreamweaver is an excellent tool for generating standards-compliant XHTML and CSS that also has some useful PHP features. Don’t make the common mistake of regarding Dreamweaver as a WYSIWYG website builder. If you try to use it as a drag and drop design tool, you’ll end up with nightmarish spaghetti code. However, if you have a solid understanding of XHTML and CSS, it greatly speeds up the construction of a website, and renders a reasonably accurate view of what the site will look like while you’re still working on it. There’s a 30-day free trial available from the Adobe site to help you assess whether it’s the right tool for you.

I’m currently deeply immersed in reading your “PHP Solutions” book and applying the knowledge gained to Web pages that I’m coding up. This is a great book, since you explain quite clearly the reasoning behind the code examples throughout the book – something not every book does or does well. So I’ve certainly found your book helpful so far.

Just a question: I am a beginner to Web programming (although I’ve done other types of programming). For doing server-side programming to implement dynamic behavior and a database-driven site, which is the better approach: Dreamweaver or hand-coding?

From reading your previous reply to another poster, I get the impression that Dreamweaver doesn’t really generate PHP code for you (since you mentioned that you switch to code-view to hand-code the dynamic elements). I have so far decided to go the hand-coding route (for PHP and everything else). Should I bother purchasing Dreamweaver? Would Dreamweaver really speed code development (particularly the PHP and MySQL code)?

Thanks.
Kevin

Equally, there’s no guarantee that someone with a paper qualification writes perfect code every time. The code in the page that failed could certainly be improved. However, the error would not have been displayed onscreen if I had implemented my own advice. What’s important about errors is that they should fail gracefully without exposing sensitive details or permitting data injection.

The scorn you show for Adobe tools is misplaced. Admittedly, a lot of Dreamweaver users are amateur and unskilled; but it’s also used by many professional design studios. I started using Dreamweaver to make static websites. When I decided to start using PHP, Dreamweaver was the logical choice. I was able to design the static elements of the site in Design view, and switch to Code view to hand-code the dynamic elements.

It wasn’t until my publisher asked me to write a book about using PHP in Dreamweaver that I even bothered with any of the automatic code generation (the server behaviors). The code is much more verbose than what I had been writing myself, but I quickly came to realize that large numbers of people were relying entirely on Dreamweaver to do all the coding on their behalf. This struck me as both extremely limiting and potentially dangerous. So I set out to write books to teach those people how to understand the code written by Dreamweaver, adapt it where necessary, and begin to write their own code.

A message I try to drum home all the time is that unless you understand the code being used in your web page, you shouldn’t use it. Most beginner’s books on PHP treat security as an afterthought. It should be at the forefront of the developer’s mind at all times, so if you get caught out making a mistake like I did, you can react quickly to put it right.

I certainly wouldn’t choose Dreamweaver as the IDE of choice to build a PHP application with the Zend Framework, but it’s an excellent tool for anyone who needs to add some PHP functionality to a small website. When writing PHP classes, I prefer to use PhpED. I have also been experimenting recently with Zend Studio. They’re both excellent because of the code completion, debugging features, and code introspection. But I wouldn’t use them in a million years to build my XHTML or CSS.

I make no apologies for not designing a PHP app to take you to a faraway galaxy. I write books for the beginner to intermediate level. Everyone needs to start somewhere. I hope that what I teach through my books gives readers a solid understanding of the basics and inspires them to go further.

And no, I won’t worry about you. If you’re the gnome at the bottom of my garden, you’ll be pretty wet and miserable at the moment, while I’m indoors in the warm.

The issue wasn’t leaving in raw debugging code but poor input validation, in this case the query string. Your code also displayed poor use of PHP and MySQL which is why I managed to generate Page 4 of 9383 or whatever it was!

At the end of the day it’s no big deal because the web is full of poor code but as a teacher you will be shot down if you slip up, you know that. Put yourself up there and someone will always try to shake your tree and see what falls down.

I applaud your honesty though, although I don’t think you needed to make a blog post about it.

Anyway I will leave you in peace to carry on in the fantasy world of Adobe, the ‘amateurs’ choice of web dev tools. I had high hopes you would leave ‘Toy Town’ web dev and build a PHP app to take us to a far away Galaxy but it was not to be!

Don’t lose too much sleep wondering who I am, if you look out of your window you will see me, I am the gnome at the bottom of your garden!

As for other books, I’m in the final stages of agreeing a follow-up to PHP Solutions, and hope it will be out later this year.