which language to use for website

homeOwner

I want to do up a website/blog, nothing fancy. Does anyone have an opinion as to which language is best to use? cgi script? PHP? plain html done in dreamweaver?? something else?

Adam

One thing I will say is GOD NO, NOT DREAMWEAVER!! Its just teribble, I can't stand it, and I think pages made in dreamweaver inevitably look terrible! On a more practical note, my dad would use dreamweaver a fair bit, with the accompanying book, and even at that I can write entire pages faster than him in html with no fancy editor.

I would say if you have the knowledge, just write out the html and use php alongside it, if you plan on doing blogs and storing them in a database?

The tedious part is writing a style sheet, but once that is done your site will look good, and most importantly imo, consistent from page to page.

finnpark

I would get a free template of the Internet and ten use use Microsoft Frontpage to edit. Download the free templates, some good free template web sites if you search hard, and then open them in frontage and change to suit.

Only use PERL or PHP etc if you intend having dynamic content on your site or you intend doing interactive stuff like a guestbook or whatever (form etc).

bishopLEN

fade_to_grey wrote:

One thing I will say is GOD NO, NOT DREAMWEAVER!! Its just teribble, I can't stand it, and I think pages made in dreamweaver inevitably look terrible! On a more practical note, my dad would use dreamweaver a fair bit, with the accompanying book, and even at that I can write entire pages faster than him in html with no fancy editor.

I would say if you have the knowledge, just write out the html and use php alongside it, if you plan on doing blogs and storing them in a database?

The tedious part is writing a style sheet, but once that is done your site will look good, and most importantly imo, consistent from page to page.

I aggree totaly. Get the content in roughly. Then spend time adding each small frill bit by bit.

Rollo Tamasi

Do you know any PHP MYSQL?

This is a tutorial i found on how to write your own blog in PHP, i haven't done it myself but from reading thru snippets of it and reading the feedback it looks perfect for you. Enjoy!

homeOwner

Cool, thanks for that link. And for all the other suggestions.
I think i'll start with a free download to get something going and then add to it with php. I am fairly handy at coding and know a bit of perl. php i'd be learing from scratch but how hard can it be

Adam

Not very hard at all to be honest! I'm only at it 3 months myself and while I do stumble now and again I find most of it quite easy and I had no programming experience at all to bein with!

grahamor

fade_to_grey wrote:

I think pages made in dreamweaver inevitably look terrible!

i think thats possibly the most stupid thing i have ever heard. Dreamweaver is just there to lend a helping hand, it still needs a person on the other end to make something with it.

fade_to_grey wrote:

On a more practical note, my dad would use dreamweaver a fair bit

have you seen any other websites make with dreamweaver besides your dads ???

Adam

Yes, and I have used it myself, and I find that if a page/site is made in dreamweaver it is usually fairly obviously the case. Anyway, if the OP wished to dispute my comments fair enough, but I wasn't looking for an argument.

democrates

homeOwner wrote:

Cool, thanks for that link. And for all the other suggestions.
I think i'll start with a free download to get something going and then add to it with php. I am fairly handy at coding and know a bit of perl. php i'd be learing from scratch but how hard can it be

Same choice I'd make, the range of free downloads keeps growing, from quite simple to industrial, and most designed heavily oo encouraging you to extend as you see fit.

PHP syntax is quite simple and there are no terse equivalents as you get in perl, meaning you can easily learn from existing code. That has been a crib of mine with perl, 7 lines of code to crack CSS on dvd's is an admirable tour de force, but forget about using it as a learning tool unless you're a masochist. That tersity has happened a lot in the perl community as producers compete to outdo each other with artistic code. I think Larry Wall recognises this and other issues, Perl 6 promises to be a significant leap on many fronts and I wouldn't be surprised if it wins much greater popularity.

PHP is verbose as a high-level language should be by definition. Like mod_perl there's mod_php for apache available on most hosting packages. There's no equivalent to cpan, but a good language reference with user comments, and scads of downloads. A good book is "PHP and Mysql for Web Development".

Check out joomla, xaraya (fork of phpnuke), p4a, typo3 (gigantic). In addition, radicore for admin type apps has some well explained design choices, while eclipse design notes offer further insight into ide extensibility, both a good read for any advancing developer.

irishmilk

fade_to_grey wrote:

One thing I will say is GOD NO, NOT DREAMWEAVER!!

disagree strongly depending on my own experience.

EthanCleary

I am a recent scripter and I found VWD 2005 (express edition free from MS) excellent for beginners. It offers you a wide range of functionality and helps me bypass some HTML stuff.

For instance you can create a Master Page to control all themes for each web page in your site, and connecting to a DB is relatively easy.

I know that some experienced coders will guffaw at "newbies" calling themselves web developers but I found it a great help, especially with server side scripting.

homeOwner

democrates wrote:

Like mod_perl there's mod_php for apache available on most hosting packages.

I presume I will need to go through a webserver at some stage, i have downloaded apache myself and have had some success playing around with it.
Is there a special directory to put in php files are can they go in ROOT? I have been able to load html and jsp files over apache, but i tried to load up a php file i downloaded and it wont interpret it as php, it keeps showing it as text.

I havent had time to read up on it yet, i indend to this weekend but any tips or hints appreciated.

I'll check out those links you posted too.

Cheers

finnpark

homeOwner wrote:

I presume I will need to go through a webserver at some stage, i have downloaded apache myself and have had some success playing around with it.
Is there a special directory to put in php files are can they go in ROOT? I have been able to load html and jsp files over apache, but i tried to load up a php file i downloaded and it wont interpret it as php, it keeps showing it as text.

I havent had time to read up on it yet, i indend to this weekend but any tips or hints appreciated.

I'll check out those links you posted too.

Cheers

I don't use PhP myself but you will need to download, install and configure a PhP compiler. You can download PhP latest version and apache as a single package I think which will make life easier. You need to google for it but I presume it is relatively straight forward to install.

finnpark

Rollo Tamasi wrote:

Do you know any PHP MYSQL?

This is a tutorial i found on how to write your own blog in PHP, i haven't done it myself but from reading thru snippets of it and reading the feedback it looks perfect for you. Enjoy!

May I ask what a Blog is and what is it used for?

philologos

fade_to_grey wrote:

One thing I will say is GOD NO, NOT DREAMWEAVER!! Its just teribble, I can't stand it, and I think pages made in dreamweaver inevitably look terrible! On a more practical note, my dad would use dreamweaver a fair bit, with the accompanying book, and even at that I can write entire pages faster than him in html with no fancy editor.

I would say if you have the knowledge, just write out the html and use php alongside it, if you plan on doing blogs and storing them in a database?

The tedious part is writing a style sheet, but once that is done your site will look good, and most importantly imo, consistent from page to page.

I use Dreamweaver just in the code view and its fine... different people different things I suppose

irishguy

finnpark wrote:

May I ask what a Blog is and what is it used for?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

Anyone got any good sites for free CSS templates or just general web devlopment resources?

projectmayhem

this is a free proprietry blog script (PHP) with all the mod-cons you need (comments, admin stuff etc.).. design-wise, it's a basic blog with a header and your entries below, snipped to fit the front page. but you can build out from that to make an impressive looking site with a little bit of CSS and a few graphics

Adam

There's a handy little WAMP (Windows, Apache, Mysql, PHP) installer from the sourceforge guys if you google it, manually installing and setting up apache and php and getting them to work in unison can be an AWFUL pain if you're not sure what you're doing, I would recommend the program for you if you're new to this sort of thing.

mewso

EthanCleary wrote:

I found VWD 2005 (express edition free from MS) excellent for beginners

Good to see at least one person using .net. I'll second .net VWD for most db related web applications.

democrates

homeOwner wrote:

I presume I will need to go through a webserver at some stage, i have downloaded apache myself and have had some success playing around with it.
Is there a special directory to put in php files are can they go in ROOT? I have been able to load html and jsp files over apache, but i tried to load up a php file i downloaded and it wont interpret it as php, it keeps showing it as text.

I havent had time to read up on it yet, i indend to this weekend but any tips or hints appreciated.

I'll check out those links you posted too.

Cheers

Check out xampp for an easy setup, they do the hard work so you don't have to.:)

Found a bunch of handy links in a strange place. Actally bookmarked it as I periodically use some of those links. Lazy. Just because I said it now it'll probably disappear.

Your webroot directory is fine for php, once apache knows they need to be handled by the php interpreter. I'd back up the existing code and do a fresh install of xampp. To confim your php setup is good save the following code into say phpconfig.php :
[PHP]<?php
phpinfo();
?>
[/PHP]
and call it from your browser. You should get a bunch of tables of info about the server setup. (Never leave one of these on a production server.)

Note the settings for magic quotes, safe mode, and register globals, all will become clear as you get into php. Enjoy.

homeOwner

I got xampp working - thanks for that suggestion by the way it was so easy to set up and get going. I have my php script talking a mysql db all grand, was able to knock up an login script and a register script.......

So next think i want to tackle is how to track a session. I have a section on my website (which is turning into more than a blog), for people to login and "do stuff". Its like a members area, but personalised to the user that is logged in.

I see there is a start_session() function call, do I need to get a session id and save it and check it each time the user moves to a new page to make sure it is the same user? I have in the past played around with servlets but not too clear on the php way to do it. What about using cookies? Is that a good idea? what if the user has cookies turned off?

Any hints/tips appreciated.

Gosh

I see there is a start_session() function call, do I need to get a session id and save it and check it each time the user moves to a new page to make sure it is the same user?

Normally you do not need to do anything - session ids are used by PHP to ensure transition from page to page with the correct session variables being used for that user.


Here's some useful links to understand PHP sessions ...

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/webdbapps/chapter/ch08.html

http://www.phpfreaks.com/tutorials/41/0.php

homeOwner

Cheers for that Gosh, i'll give it a go this evening.

I am really amazed at how easy it is to get something up and running in php.

Gosh

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/webdb...pter/ch08.html

The section on registering session variables is out of date.

democrates

Check out the sessions section in the php manual as a handy reference.

Bear in mind that many hosting providers will be running mature/stable versions of php and mysql rather than the latest eg PHP4.3 rather than PHP5. Best to make sure your development platform matches the live so you don't get caught out with the latest greatest app that can only be hosted in a few places.

Glad to hear you're enjoying it btw.

homeOwner

Ok I folowed that tutorial on phpfreaks and it was really good. I found everything I needed to add session info to my screens. What I really liked about those tutorials is that they were simple. A few lines to do something and it works well. It is also really well explained.

Democrates I will check out the link you posted tonight, cant hurt to get more info. I will probably come back to this later when I look into security, but first things first.

Ok so, next step in the process, i want to add something like a chat area where people can talk to each other, but in a members area so only two people who know each others username can chat, a bit like instant messaging but just on my website. The idea is that members can talk to other members if they are logged in and their conversation is private. I did a search and found some free chat scripts but they are really complicated and there are loads of files in the application. I just need something simple. Does anyone know of a basic bare-bones chat room script out there?

I can probably put something together myself as I am getting the hang of php now, but just want to save myself some time. My other half is really annoyed at how much time i have spent at the computer since last thursday!!! (then there's the world cup comming up and i need all my spare time to watch that )