I recommend working through this book as a starting point: http://www.headfirstlabs.com/books/hfphp/ http://www.headfirstlabs.com/books/hfphp/ If you are just

I recommend working through this book as a starting point: http://www.headfirstlabs.com/books/hfphp/ http://www.headfirstlabs.com/books/hfphp/ If you are just getting starting with html/css there is an html/css book that would be a good idea to work through first. The head first books will give you a good foundation in PHP, MySQL, HTML, and CSS. After working through those books you need to pick your own project to work on . . . pick some type of website or simple web app that you need . . . and work on that . . . Build a few of your apps from scratch, writing your own login system, etc (using one of the tutorials out there). It's a good idea to write everything from scratch so you can understand what goes on behind the scenes in an app. After that you're going to want to learn a framework. For PHP I recommend Laravel. There are great screen casts at laracasts.com. As far as future employment . . . I would recommend trying to pick up some freelance projects as soon as you're comfortable with html/css/php. Wordpress might be a good skill to learn to get you familiar with php/mysql uploading files and it's php based. Once you are familiar with php and laravel you can look for a php job using laravel. Also consider learning Rails (Ruby Framework) as there are lots of opportunities in Rails. When you get stuck on something google for it and look for answers on stackoverflow.com. That should get you moving in the right direction.