Okay, guys, first of all, let me say that I have absolutely positively no programming skills whatsoever. I've been running my sites using, at first, Frontpage, then later, with Wordpress blogs. And none of them have complex scripts or whatnot, because everything that I run on my site, someone else wrote, and I just plugged them in. Because I now want to make as much as I can off this Internet thing, and optimize my sites and future sites for maximum effect, can anyone tell me what exactly do I need to learn (I plan on going back to college) in order to learn to do these things: 1) Create sites that I can be automated so users can add their stuff to it with minimum work on my part. I.e. I want to create a site that will be driven by the user, and not me. No daily updates on my part, etc. 2) Completely move my crappy Frontpage site over to php. What kind of programming skills do I need to learn to move everything over? I think that's about it. Basically I'm looking for advice from people who already knows this stuff, to tell me what kind of courses I need to learn, programming language, etc, to make sites that can, basically, run by themselves. Any thoughts? And remember, I am a total noob to website design, even after all these years. I simply have no understand of how anything works. I've just sort of bungled my way up to now, and now I want to actually LEARN and KNOW this stuff. Thanks.
Hi jackburton2006, it sounds like 1 and 2 are essentially the same - learn PHP! This is just my personal opinion, but I wouldn't attend a course to learn this stuff, I'd just find as many tutorials on the net as I could and then get an in depth book on PHP. If you sepnd an hour or so a day learning it, you'll make progress. I guess it depends on motivation, whether you've got the discipline to make yourself sit down and do it, or whether you need someone to push you in a classroom environment.
Basically what you need is a community script such as ovidentia http://www.ovidentia.org however it needs some basic php knowledge to setup the script, connect the database, create basic areas and content. That script allow users not only to update the main site but also have their personal pages and email with custom content.
Once you try basic PHP, you'll soon get into to intermediate and advanced stuff. Learn HTML and CSS first I'd say, then move on to PHP and MySQL. No need for college IMO - too slow. 3 -5 weeks Full Time at home with 2 good books and online tutorials will get you there. Do print off a document like this and keep it handy: http://www.sitepoint.com/article/php-security-blunders
My 2 cents. It seems like you're at an interesting cross roads. I think the fundemental question is do you build or buy? Or more specifically do you -learn how to- build or do you buy. I personally enjoy programming so I tend to want to build, even when it's more prudent to buy or find a free solution. There are tons of applications that you can either buy or are free that might satisfy all of your requirements. I know that my web host has around a dozen "1 Click" installs that allow you to easily set up many different applications. There are solutions like PHP Nuke or DotNet Nuke that might allow you to do what you need. My advice to you is to do a little soul searching, if you really enjoy programming then you should go down the learning to program path, because there are a lot of ways to make money programming and it's a growing field. If you don't enjoy programming then you might want to consider looking for a free or low cost pre-made software solution. as for college jackburton2006... I think a good education is always a good idea and statistics show that your income will likely be much higher in the future if you go to college, but you probably won't learn much about developing web applications their. Most colleges focus on Java, which is a nice way to get a good career in software development, but you'd be very lucky to find a school that has more than one class in PHP. Good luck...
Thanks, guys. From the sound of it, learning php is the way to go. I'm going to look into a php class if one exists, but I'll definitely buy a php tutorial and go from there. Learn one book at a time. I don't know if I enjoy programming, as I've never done it before, so we'll see if it's something I like when I actually start doing it.
I would agree with everything T0PS30 says EXCEPT I think you'll need a bit more time to learn MySQL. I am learning SQL at the moment and it is not as quick as learning HTML by a long shot.
Do you mean books to buy on the internet, or book that you read on the internet? Which are the same as E-books lol Anyway, PHP, could that be used to make a member login page, or something of the sorts. Such as you enter information in a field, its stored on a server, and it can be retreived from the server when the right information is given again? If it is please tell me, if not, what is it?
it's pretty obvious you need to learn php from php.net start from there it won't take much of your time just allot 2 to 4 hours of learning to write a code. unfortunately, fp is not the choice of tools for it alters code it's a wysiwyg editor you don't need that you either need homesite from allaire or ultra edit or notepad some editor that don't alter the code without your permission, isn't fp scary?
I don't think I qualify as "one who knows this stuff" because I am only a few steps ahead of your goals but here a a couple of comments that I hope will help you. Convert your site from FP to pure html. Get rid of the FP extensions. To do this you need to learn basic html and be able to research the things you haven't mastered yet. FP writes a lot of "bad code". It works but it isn't standard. Php will tolerate a lot of FP's "bad code" but you can not use FP to edit php files. You can but we won't go there. Moving from pure html to very basic php initially can be as as easy as changing the file extensions from html to php. Then you need to learn more php to add the server side dynamic functions you desire. Colbyt
Sams Teach Yourself PHP/mySQL/apache in 24 hours is a great resource, thats where I got started. It gives you a good overview, and by the end starts you on the type of scripts you would use to accept information into a SQL database and output it onto a browser, all through PHP MySQL integration. You really start to get a grasp on how powerful PHP really is, also, when you first start you may want to try using the XAMP compilation of programs so you can tinker around with the two programs.
It starts from basic and goes to advanced but keep in mind that you have to learn oho with very good considertaion to develop your interrust and do work hard wish you best of luck in the future