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lukin

Hi,
I have just finished a software development degree and I'd like to get into the area of web development.
I've gone for a few interviews for those kind of jobs but I am usually asked "So what sites out there have you worked on so we can have a look at them?" The problem is I've never actually put a site live.
I've done a couple for college projects but I didn't upload them as I didn't think it would be a great help career-wise as they only contained stuff like rollovers, a bit of Javascrtipt and CSS, basic HTML etc.
No employer is going to be impressed with that as there are 12 year olds knocking up that stuff all the time.

I know, I know, it's a bit ridiculous expecting to get a job as a web developer without any example of your work somewhere to look at. But in my defence I live in dial-up land so that makes maintaining a site extremely difficult. Also I've had my hands full with exams and projects while I've been in college.
There's no point talking about it now but it's not too late to throw something together.
I'd like to have some stuff in there like DHTML, AJAX, XML, XSLT, JSF, JSP, (they seem to be asked for a lot in job advertisements) and maybe even have a few EJB's running in the background.
But then I was thinking maybe it would be better to do it in ASP as it is easier and there seems to be a lot of work out there for ASP developers.
I'd like to have a database too to show I know PHP, MySQL etc.
I need some pointers, I'm not looking for an easy way out, as in "I want to do a website without learning anything, I only want to pretend I know this stuff".
I genuinely want to learn the stuff I mentioned as well as show what I can do.

py2006

What you can do is create a few websites based on ficticious businesses/companies etc. Each of these sites will showcase your various skills and talents.

You can choose to say to potential employers that you have yet to have a site go live but that you have created the following sites as projects and from them they can see what you can do.

Or you can choose not to say they are based on ficticious companies! :P

lukin

Good idea, seeing as most web development companies clients would be businesses/companies. It would look better than something like a personal web page with my interests and hobbies as content.
I haven't a clue about how to do php, mysql though. I know most hosting sites like Blacknight Solutions etc. provide support for a database but how does it actually work?
I've done Oracle PLSQL so I know how to create stored procedures etc. but do I run a script on their server to create tables etc?
Also if I want to deploy an EJB to their server how do I do that?

py2006

Well I am no expert to be honest but if you have database experience you shouldn't have much difficulty adopting to MySql.

I am hoping to learn PHP and MySql myself shortly as I have a few online business ideas floating around in my head that would require databases etc.

Eoin

lukin wrote:

I know most hosting sites like Blacknight Solutions etc. provide support for a database but how does it actually work?
I've done Oracle PLSQL so I know how to create stored procedures etc. but do I run a script on their server to create tables etc?

You should get a web-based admin tool for the database where you can execute the SQL directly. Most likely there'll be wizards for setting up tables.

lukin

Cheers thanks.

alanjgrace

All or most hosting providers have PhpMyAdmin as part of their control panel, once you buy the hosting package that has a db then you will get phpMyAdmin access. This allows you to create the code for the searches and querys through an interface as opposed to coding it yourself.

You should download xampp which you can run on your pc and acts as a server so you can test pages locally.

You need to organsie a domain and hosting and get yourself set up if you are going to mess around with the php and sql and want to put tests sites online though.