Find something that has you start AND finish something, anything. Almost any O'Reilly book. Read the reviews on Amazon to see if it's the right thing. Webmonkey also has lots of beginner tutorials. The technology doesn't matter. The important thing is to try to BUILD something, fail (or not), and finally get it working. The first time you see something YOU wrote actually work, it's orgasmic.

An oldie but goodie:

http://webmonkey.com/webmonkey/programming/php/tutorials/tut...

You can't get wet from the word "water".