5 replies to this topic

[Zer033]

Hi everyone, I have a few beginner questions regarding website building if you all don't mind. First, a little background, I'm primarily a C++ programmer and I've also used various game scripts (unrealscript, torquescript, some actionscript), and a little bit of javascript. I can grasp the idea of writing code and compiling it into a .dll .exe or whatever then having someone launch it or include it and use the functions written. Web coding has always been a bit of an intimidation for me, yea I know that's kinda backwards, but the code I read for websites seems even more complicated than the C++ to me, or maybe it is that it doesn't seem as elegant and structured. Anyway, I've only programmed in htlm back when geocities were still active lol.

So what I'm wanting to do is start a website. I want it to have where I can update news each day if I want and x amount of news items can be displayed on that main page before it makes a page 2, 3, etc. where it puts any old news items. That will be the "home". I also want a way for people to register to the site and comment on news items if they want. From there I want a few sections that can be clicked on from a top bar that will be displayed on each page. I want a tutorial section, product review section, and a game browse section for games/programs that I've made. I also may want at some point a way for people to purchase game downloads or donate and keep the games themselves free.

My question is what would you guys recommend I do to get this up and running as fast as possible? I feel like I can learn along the way so if there are any easy ways to get something decent "up" so that I can maybe play around with it and make it better afterward that would be preferable. So far I haven't done anything. So any advice on how I should start is appreciated. I would like advice on who I should get to host the site as well as what the best way to register a domain name is, through host package or do on my own first and where etc. Once that stuff is out of the way I would also appreciate any advice on the technologies I can maybe utilize to get the site up fairly quick while still allowing me the freedom to do my own thing as I learn. Also what exactly should I learn? There are a lot of different technology names being thrown around and I'm not really sure what I need to make a site like I've described. Finally, I am used to using Visual Studio for my coding, compiling, and debugging are there any useful plug-ins I should have or is Visual Studio a good IDE for web development already? I've heard of something called Dreamweaver, but is that really necessary?

As for my knowledge of the technologies the way I understand it is web pages are primarily htlm or xhtlm? CSS or style sheets are used to kind of grab element hierarchies defined in xml or (what?) and format them in a certain way and basically transforms them into htlm? Javascript is kind of C++ like, but I'm not really sure how to use it from a website perspective. CMS is content management system, but I'm not really sure how to set up or access something like this once a site is up. As for php and everything else I don't really know what their purpose is.

I really just want to get something decent up and running so that I can start to get my feet wet with the coding and extend upon it.

I know this is a lot and any advice is appreciated, thanks.

[Alexander]

You may like how easy it is!

If anything is dynamic on the web, it is likely run by either PHP, ASP, or possibly by Ruby, Python, ColdFusion, Perl or other CGI programs. The most simple and widely supported of the bunch I would say is PHP, it can be embedded in HTML forms to build web applications fairly easily. MySQL is an SQL-like database engine and dialect that can aid in creating databases for example to store your news items.

Take a look at for example a pagination script, to automatically page items from a database: Pagination - what it is and how to do it

I doubt it will look as hard as C, PHP has a fair bit of OO support to, to make things look more structured.

[Simonxz]

HTML is the basic content of the page.
CSS is how the elements are displayed on the page (ie. menu on the right, font, background color, etc)
JavaScript is to run scripts client side (on the user's machine)
PHP is to run on the server's machine (mostly used for database (mysql))

The easiest way to do what you want to do is a CMS, most of them are free and very easy to install. There's wordpress, joomla, etc. To install, you download it, you put the files on the server, and you go to a certain install page, (all of this will be in a README.txt file or something similar). They will need from you a MySQL database and the informations to connect to it. Lots of hosts give you the opportunity to create one using a wizard.

[Thierrymarg]

I have no experience in web design and I am trying to build a website for my small business. I'm starting photography business online marketplace me, and I want to build a professional looking website. There is a good program that will help to build there. Already bought a domain name and hosting space.

[Alexander]

Thierrymarg said:

I have no experience in web design and I am trying to build a website for my small business. I'm starting photography business online marketplace me, and I want to build a professional looking website. There is a good program that will help to build there. Already bought a domain name and hosting space.

Do you have a specific question in mind on how to create a processional website? You could create a new thread for this if you would like.

[bbqroast]

If your primary experience is in C++ go for HTML, CSS and MySQL+PHP if you wish to do SSI stuff :)