Please suggest a book which clarifies core fundamentals and concepts.
I started with Visual Quickstart Guide to PHP (current ed: http://www.amazon.com/PHP-Web-Visual-QuickStart-Edition/dp/0... ) It covers a lot of ground on the basics, and was very happy with it.
Once you get going php.net's on-line manual is a super reference, has the command, how to use it and a followup discussion that usually well covers any bugs, alternatives and gotchas. I usually search in it via google.
I guess the main thing is like most languages there are many many ways to do the same thing... So, one book showing building a sample bookstore app may do it one way and an other book will do it completely different. When you get to that type of tutorial you just got to check the sample sections on each one till you find a method you're comfortable with.
PHP Manual: http://www.php.net/manual/en/index.php
[Edit] Derp I just noticed that you mention the manual at the end of your initial post.
The left-hand sidebar also lists all related functions.
After having it working in a very "procedural" way I started to make it OOO compliant (it was PHP4) and then I refined it for some times.
I have a question, btw... How could it be that you are not a newbie to programming but PHP is your FIRST programming language?
This is "the" php book that everybody uses to learn php and mysql. It's also the book I used years ago. It covers both php and mysql, which is good because both are consistently used together.