PHP Newbie, Advice & Tips?

Hello,





I am new to PHP and only been learning past fortnight.





I would love to here some feedback from you.





First: how long did it take you to learn PHP, by this i mean when you started writing your own scripts etc?





2) I have bought 4 books now and none of them are made out to be what they say they are. They all seem to dive straight in and not explain anything properly and confuses me terribly, anyone suggest any great php books for beginners? i have done search after search and there so many yet sadly the ones i bought was a waste of my money





3) I have no background in any programming althou i know very basic html, i am a computer expert when it comes to building computers, repairing, OS diagnosing etc, i learnt all this myself and done it very quickly. Problem i seem to be having it i am either forgetting what i had been reading whether online or in a book. Is this normal? i mean it is only me who seems to be stupid at PHP, i cannot seem to get to grips with it, i mean i can be told something to do in book and am constantly looking back to see what i got to write because i tend to forget and not know how to write a script even thou i have learnt rather allot for past 14 days.





I am not sure if this is good at all and worry as i always wanted to learn php and feel rather down as to not being able to get to grips with it.





If anyone can give me any advice, tips etc i would value them dearly, i just want to learn PHP but it seems a very slow process for me althou i have always been a quick learner.





I have visited some sites such a w3schools but find they jump straight into something without much explanation althou everyone seems to recommend it and another is tzig again good but lacks some depth of information.





Thank you


MatPHP Newbie, Advice %26amp; Tips?
I'd recommend Ruby on Rails, because it is much less confusing than PHP





Don't worry, all programmers forget stuff.