It will teach you the basics of PHP, XHTML, CSS, and Javascript. But you might have to do some of web searching to answer your questions... use it like a map.
I personally like PHP because it allows you a lot of freedom. There isn't any framework as part of PHP so you can get up and running quickly. That was very helpful for me when I started with PHP 10+ years ago.
Granted once you get good, for your "weekend projects" you will want to pick up a framework like CakePHP (very much like Ruby on Rails) and start building your apps on that. CakePHP has a nice blog tutorial [1].
Whatever you choose for a language / database / etc. good luck and have fun!
It will teach you the basics of PHP, XHTML, CSS, and Javascript. But you might have to do some of web searching to answer your questions... use it like a map.
I personally like PHP because it allows you a lot of freedom. There isn't any framework as part of PHP so you can get up and running quickly. That was very helpful for me when I started with PHP 10+ years ago.
Granted once you get good, for your "weekend projects" you will want to pick up a framework like CakePHP (very much like Ruby on Rails) and start building your apps on that. CakePHP has a nice blog tutorial [1].
Whatever you choose for a language / database / etc. good luck and have fun!
[1] http://book.cakephp.org/view/219/Blog