Honestly, i've been programming since i was 11 years old...and the way i started and the way i will always learn the most is by reading examples/tutorials and trial and error...there is no book that is going to tell you exactly what you want to do, and the best way to learn is to dive right in.

It may be daunting and discouraging at first, but once you start getting small things working here and there, it will motivate you to continue and figure the rest out.

And nowadays pretty much everything you ever want to figure out can be found with a google search, my suggestion is to start there and see if anyone else is doing what your trying to do, and over time you will eventually get the hang of it.

You only learn from application. Take what you have learnt and create
something with it. No matter how many books you read, No matter how
many people tell you to do something, you will not retain the information
if you don't do it!

You can find tutorials on lynda.C0m, PHP tutorials lynda.com teaches new and experienced web developers the steps for building dynamic, data-driven, interactive sites

Try htmldog

If you can do basic php and sql, why not try bidding for some projects on elance/freelancer and get some first hand experience?

I have went through large list of programming languages in my life, starting with BASIC and all the way to Java, C++, PHP, even hardware machine code languages.

So here is the thing:

the programming language is really nothing more than a bunch of loops, if-else statements, arrays, variables, and other conditional execution.

To advance your PHP experience from basic-knowledge up to something cooler, you should start looking at PHP as object oriented language. Learn about Classes and how to properly work in OOP environment.

to push your knowledge further, use already pre-written environment like CakePHP. It's more than a set of libraries, it's a whole framework in its own.

look into AJAX and JQuery to enhance your server-client interaction; currently less and less websites use traditional POST (page reload) approach;

There are tons of free resources on the internet. If you want to gain an
extra edge, you should check out your local library and read some books
on web development and PHP.

As the others mentioned, hit up the forums and check out sample scripts on php.net.

You may try checking out w3schools has helped me out to enhance and develop..but i do agree that you need to have some firsthand experience..because you can only learn a lot once you do the actual programming. and from there you will learn some tricks that will develop your programming skills

I highly recommend you learning for FREE at developphp.com the guy is awesome, cool video tutorials and he also explains other languages like action script hope that help

bye

write your own wordpress type CMS. That will pretty much cover anything that you'll ever need. As mentioned, concentrate on object oriented programming, including creating your own objects, etc...
There is nothing like experience to teach you...

Just go to w3schools.com and learn PHP with a simple method.

The first you should study php basic on w3school.com or the same website and try to code some simple website ... when you familiar with php basic you can training it more on php.net ...=> code and code .... that's my way

Buy one of the Sitepoint tutorials. They're easy and very insturctive

[DELETED]

You can learn them by tutorials . and you will find videos in you tube check it

There are so many online free tutorials available on internet.Just search it on Google.

You can start your own project or somewhat building a site using PHP and probably you'll encounter errors, try to solve it in yourself, ask help from forums and learn. In this way, it will develop your knowledge and further.

You will learn from trial and error method, That is the best method to learn most effectively.