Help a n00b to create a website

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Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
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Location
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OK, well not quite a n00b but I feel like it with websites.

I am a professional software developer who usually works with .NET and Oracle so I know how to code, but at work I stay well away from any web stuff.
I did do the odd web page back in the 90s when frames and tables were still the in thing but from what I gather that's a bit old hat now ;)

Anyway, I've decided that I want to create an online gallery as a project and want to know where to start!
I'm either going to do it with MySQL/PHP or SQL Server/ASP.NET - probably leaning towards the PHP route as this will let me learn more given that I can code in VB.NET/C# already!

So, what I actually want to know is...
  • What is a good package to use to design/code the actual web site?
  • Where can I learn about XHTML/CSS whatever else people use to do websites now?
  • Where can I learn about PHP if I want to use this in my site?
  • Anything else you guys think might be useful.
 
Well, coming from a .NET background, you'll be used to working in IDEs, but I'd actually recommend you stay away from most of the web development IDEs out there if you're new to web design. Instead, get a decent text editor like Notepad++ or SciTE, and do the coding by hand, which is especially important when it comes to the actual design part, as using WYSIWYG editors to do this gets you into bad habits easily.
 
Cheers guys, looks to be the sort of stuff I'm after.
I think I would prefer to do it with a text editor - at least to start with - just to get an idea of what stuff does what exactly.

Looking at the CSS it seems fairly similar to XSL-FO which I've done a bit of at work so hopefully will be able to pick it all up pretty quickly.
 
Definantly steer away from getting a program to do all the work for you; in a compiled application no one will notice but on the web beautiful code is key. I use notepad2 myself; it's got syntax highlighting, automatic indenting, line numbering and a number of other useful features. Plus it's totally free and doesn't even need installing :)

I can't possibly make you a XHTML/CSS ninja with one post, but if there's one thing I can recommend it would be this: Keep content and style separate! Learn XHTML (It's really not very difficult, especially coming from a programming background) and write code which makes sense (ie. no table-based layouts or spacer images; it's just not logical). Throw in ids and classes sparingly (if you find yourself repeating ids/classes, there's probably a better way) and keep ALL the style information in one or more CSS files. CSS is also very easy to pick up, and it's largely down to best practice techniques you find yourself repeating over and over on different projects. I personally find myself using the Global White Space Reset and the Phark Image Replacement technique in all my projects.

I can't help you much when it comes to PHP (Ruby on Rails walks all over PHP) ;) but the online tutorial Practical PHP Programming is a great resource :)
 
Last edited:
Conrad11 said:
Firezilla
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Filezilla.
 
You should look into Ruby on Rails. Its a very good framework for developing web sites/applications.
 
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