I highly recommend all books by Wrox Press, to put it simply.

I don't think learning Visual Basic is a good base for learning PHP. It is very different, very very different. I'm learning VB myself at the moment, and it's really nothing like PHP or C/++. The latter on the other hand, is a great way to get familiar with coding (if your itention is to learn PHP).

But the bottom line is, if you want to learn PHP, you really don't need to learn other languages on the way. It will be a waste of them and you will possibly get confused with the languages. Now that I'm used to code in PHP I can't stop putting $ before variables in C. :) Just like I constantly use single quotes in VB or == in comparisons.

If you want to familiarize yourself with visual languages, go ahead, Visual Basic is a very good choice to begin with. You will learn all you need to learn about Visual Languages after studying Visiual Basic.

But I have some suggestions for you:
1- Considering the fact that you already know C, why not try Visual C, instead of Visiual Basic? You will be very comfortable with the syntax, besides both languages have strength in the same field: Desktop Applications. So you can do anything with Visiual C, that you plan to do with VB. VC is much popular among professional programmers too..

2- If you plan to have expertise in desktop application programming, I would strongly suggest Java among all others. It's the future! ;) VB and VC has many advantages to coders especially if you are a Windows programmer, but Java is a platform-free enviroment and your application will work with all platforms, not only in Windows. So it's really very popular in professional programming business. (except MS's recent strategy to finish it)

Regards,
Logician

Had anybody uesd it ?