How to learn PHP / mySQL?

of the books listed are books I would pick koterova. very good book if you are a beginner. there pretty good and just described what's happening in the network and how it works. in General, given a good base for further development.
list of books added to "web application development with php and mysql" by Laura Thomson and Luke vellinge. these people took part in the development of mysql. so I know a lot :) and throughout the book you create a web store. so everything is based on examples :)
good luck in the competition.)

I highly recommend getjump.github.io/ru-php-the-right-way
Quote not to retell in their own words:

The Internet is very much outdated information, which leads to confusion, dissemination of wrong decisions and poor code writing for beginners, PHP developers. PHP: the Right Way — legkodimova a quick reference guide to rules effective use of PHP

As soon as You get to OOP in PHP5 I suggest you to read "PHP 5 for professionals, ed Lecky-Thompson, Hao EIDE-Goodman, Alec Cove, Steven D. Nowicki, Professional PHP 5". In my opinion the most normal book on PHP I've seen :)
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And about how to learn... I think we need a lot of practice to do their ideas, maybe show them to others more experienced developers who have time to talk with You :)

not really for beginners but in the future I advise you to read "Matt Zandstra / Matt Zandstra — PHP Objects, Patterns and Practice / PHP. Objects, patterns, and programming techniques"

From the beginning, put HAMR or Denver (or better virtual machine and Linux/UNIX, very useful in the future) and D. kotěra no doubt in it as far as I remember described the process of installation Denver. Once the follow your pevruyu echo 'Hello world', master General syntax (loops, functions, variables, include) take any engine something, I picked punbb 2.2.x engine forum — it helped me understand functional programming plus learn to do a pure database queries, that is, was a logical continuation of the study of mysql to write queries to put the indexes joiny and so on. for starters, you can set the task — to change the appearance of the main page of the forum, to make a unit to "enter" on the main.
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Once you feel that you are like a fish in water in this engine, we can take freimark and chop it to the ground. I once took Codeigniter — using it I've learned a bit about OOP, routing, ORM, MVC and then HMVC, caching.

Good video-tutorials blog.themeforest.net/screencasts/diving-into-php-video-series/

I taught off of manam php.net
Well, then read koterova and OOP in PHP, the author unfortunately I do not remember.
In General, whatever you like to teach. For me it is more efficient to read off manuals than books. Books I reinforced the resulting material, unless of course it's required :)