Years ago I would say pick up a book, check out a few online sites (For PHP: PHP.net is your best friend, and they even have a beginners tutorial and virtually every installation covered (linux, mac, windows). For JS: Sitepoint.com's books have helped me) but more so than just a book, get comfortable with a nice framework like (jquery, prototype, etc), it will save you a lot and shortcut a lot of everyday things.
