Need some advice

PHB

I've decided to learn how to design websites but I've got no idea where to start. Ideally I'd want to be able to create a website similar to say facebook which I know is in php. Should I start off just learning php, or do I need a grounding in something else?
Any help would be appreciated,
Dave.

Truck

Nah better to start off with the basic designing first. Learn HTML and CSS. Then once your designing webpages you can get into scripting php.

tomED

Truck wrote: »

Nah better to start off with the basic designing first. Learn HTML and CSS. Then once your designing webpages you can get into scripting php.

+1

thedesigntribe

I would say... it depends what you want to do, design or program.

Very few people do both really well.

If you want to be a programmer you need to learn the basics of programming. If you want to be a web designer - design, usability + HTML & CSS are your starting points.

p

I'd echo what others have said.
Your first step is to start learning HTML&CSS and they learning a bit of PHP/MYSQL and take it from there. Obviously a site like Facebook would have been done by a large team of designers & developers.

Here's a great book to get you started quickly with HTML:
http://headfirstlabs.com/books/hfhtml/


Also, a good site is www.w3schools.com

turgon

p wrote: »

Here's a great book to get you started quickly with HTML:
http://headfirstlabs.com/books/hfhtml/

I would alway recommend Your Html Source.com for learning HTML and CSS.

tomED

thedesigntribe wrote: »

I would say... it depends what you want to do, design or program.

Very few people do both really well.

If you want to be a programmer you need to learn the basics of programming. If you want to be a web designer - design, usability + HTML & CSS are your starting points.

Whatever route he choses, he will still have to output the results of his programme to HTML, this is why I would suggest he lears HTML + CSS, before even thinking about coding.

TouchingVirus

tomED wrote: »

Whatever route he choses, he will still have to output the results of his programme to HTML, this is why I would suggest he lears HTML + CSS, before even thinking about coding.

Nope, not entirely correct. It's quite possible to hand off the list of outputs to an actual template coder/website designer, telling them what each of them relates to. Then that person figures the best way to display the information and actually designs the site. If something breaks, the developer fixes it and voila - 2-man website design team and the both of them are free to get better in their chosen field as opposed to struggling to be good in the two of them.

tomED

TouchingVirus wrote: »

Nope, not entirely correct. It's quite possible to hand off the list of outputs to an actual template coder/website designer, telling them what each of them relates to. Then that person figures the best way to display the information and actually designs the site. If something breaks, the developer fixes it and voila - 2-man website design team and the both of them are free to get better in their chosen field as opposed to struggling to be good in the two of them.

Well we're in the real world and I certainly wouldn't hire a "developer" if he couldn't code HTML.

If a developer doesn't know HTML, how is he supposed to get meaningful results from the script he has written?

If he doesn't know HTML, how would he know his programming is outputting correctly?

But back to my point - how am I not correct in saying that "he will still have to output his results to HTML". So what else will he output the results to if he's developing a website?

TouchingVirus

tomED wrote: »

Well we're in the real world and I certainly wouldn't hire a "developer" if he couldn't code HTML.

If a developer doesn't know HTML, how is he supposed to get meaningful results from the script he has written?

If he doesn't know HTML, how would he know his programming is outputting correctly?

But back to my point - how am I not correct in saying that "he will still have to output his results to HTML". So what else will he output the results to if he's developing a website?

Strings - unformatted strings. For an example see below..

function blah()
{
  return "Hello World";
}

$template->assign('world', blah());
$template->display('template.tpl');

Developer 1 writes the above code, gives list of outputs to designer that says the only variable is {$world} so use it where it needs to be put.

<html>
<body>
<div align="center"><h1>{$world}</h1></div>
</body>
</html>

Complete separation of HTML coder from actual back-end developer. I n this scenario the developer needs to know how to handle $_POST, $_GET (or $_REQUEST) data if there are to be form and it would be better to have an understanding of html, but they wouldn't need to know how to code HTML.

I did this for quite a number of years when I was in secondary school while I developed my PHP coding abilities. It isn't the case for me anymore (I do know CSS/HTML and work as a web developer) but not knowing HTML/CSS didn't hamper my ability to produce working stuff, I just needed to have another "extra" person. The end result of the two-man team were better than my first meagre attempts at both development and design. If you do need to see stuff on the sceen in the mean time then there's print, echo, var_dump and print_r - after all, outputting formatted stuff that looks pretty is essentially done the same way only you attach markup onto it

tomED

Well again in the real world, you'd be absolutely useless to any potential employer. It might have worked for you in school, but it won't help you in a professional environment.

So for example, let's say you went looking for a job. What would you use for a reference? The hundreds of lines of code you wrote in the background or a website address?

Ok I guess it's the latter - so who should the employer employ? Two men, the one that was able to show what he can do or the one who wrote the engine in the background... that we can't exactly see how good it really is??

On another point - how are you supposed to build a proper web solution if you don't know what the capabilities of HTML are????? How will you know what's possible to display on screen??

I think you are being very naive about this.

TouchingVirus

tomED wrote: »

Well again in the real world, you'd be absolutely useless to any potential employer. It might have worked for you in school, but it won't help you in a professional environment.

So for example, let's say you went looking for a job. What would you use for a reference? The hundreds of lines of code you wrote in the background or a website address?

Ok I guess it's the latter - so who should the employer employ? Two men, the one that was able to show what he can do or the one who wrote the engine in the background... that we can't exactly see how good it really is??

On another point - how are you supposed to build a proper web solution if you don't know what the capabilities of HTML are????? How will you know what's possible to display on screen??

I think you are being very naive about this.

How can you know what can be displayed with HTML? It's just strings man, everything is just plain text with a bit of markup to format it. You make it seems that this HTML is an awkward beast and is fussy about what it receives. Everything is just plain old text. Not hard to grasp when you think about it.

So what you're looking to hire is a web developer and a web designer rolled into one then And I don't recall telling the OP that they should skip over HTML/CSS and go apply for a job when they have the Perl/PHP under their belt so I don't believe I'm naive at all. I've already explained that I know HTML/CSS & my programming language of choice and I am happily employed as a web developer/designer.

I believe my entire point was that in my opinion thedesigntribe was correct in their assumption that your starting point should depend on where you want to end up. Without going too offtopic, an "engine" programmer as you call it is a pretty valid position. It would be somewhat harder to explain during an interview, but I've never had an interviewer scoff at me when explain the complexities involved in pre/post processing data on the projects I've worked on. I can show them web addresses or live demo's and explain what happens in the background and make it clear the design wasn't my field. It's not all whizzbang, flash graphics and super slick CSS that the web industry is looking for and until you open up your own eyes I think you're the one being naive.

tomED

TouchingVirus wrote: »

How can you know what can be displayed with HTML? It's just strings man, everything is just plain text with a bit of markup to format it. You make it seems that this HTML is an awkward beast and is fussy about what it receives. Everything is just plain old text. Not hard to grasp when you think about it.

You're completely missing the point. Let me use a simple example.
If I to write a simple program, that creates a select menu from text I have previously inputted from a page with a few form fields, how do I firstly know how to create the initial page and then create the final display page - if I don't know any HTML????

TouchingVirus wrote: »

So what you're looking to hire is a web developer and a web designer rolled into one then And I don't recall telling the OP that they should skip over HTML/CSS and go apply for a job when they have the Perl/PHP under their belt so I don't believe I'm naive at all. I've already explained that I know HTML/CSS & my programming language of choice and I am happily employed as a web developer/designer.

Firstly, if I could find another designer and developer rolled into one - I would hire them in a second. That's what I was before I set up my own business. But they are a rare thing nowadays.

Secondly, the OP asked what he should learn first, I suggested he learned HTML first, because at the end of the day he would ultimately be outputting his code to HTML. You said this wasn't entirely correct. Ok, so now that you are happily employed - would you have been if you didn't know HTML?

TouchingVirus wrote: »

I believe my entire point was that in my opinion thedesigntribe was correct in their assumption that your starting point should depend on where you want to end up. Without going too offtopic, an "engine" programmer as you call it is a pretty valid position. It would be somewhat harder to explain during an interview, but I've never had an interviewer scoff at me when explain the complexities involved in pre/post processing data on the projects I've worked on. I can show them web addresses or live demo's and explain what happens in the background and make it clear the design wasn't my field. It's not all whizzbang, flash graphics and super slick CSS that the web industry is looking for and until you open up your own eyes I think you're the one being naive.

You can sit in interviews all day and talk about what's going on in the background - I would NEVER hire anyone on this basis without actually seeing code.

If someone came in and told me "it does all this in the background", I'd want to see actual examples.

If you were given a job on this basis, it's your employer that has been very naive.

At the end of the day -I'm sure you didn't apply or the job without knowing the basics of HTML??

Oh and...
If you go back to the OP, he said he wanted to learn how to "design websites". You can't design a website if you only know PHP.

p

TouchingVirus - you're just being pedantic. You may 'technically' be correct, but realistically the original poster would be silly not to learn the basics of HTML.


Yes, in a particular company he may not code HTML himself, but really that's an unimportant technicality that's not useful to him at this stage.

TouchingVirus

tomED wrote: »

You're completely missing the point. Let me use a simple example. If I to write a simple program, that creates a select menu from text I have previously inputted from a page with a few form fields, how do I firstly know how to create the initial page and then create the final display page - if I don't know any HTML????

Without the HTML you couldn't do such a simple task. You learn most programming languages (or most people do) by using simple things like print() to output strings to screen. Programming languages such as perl, php etc also have these output commands. HTML is not required to learn PHP and PHP is not required to learn HTML. If I asked you to write me a HTML form that when submitted will input your text into a database and you didn't know a scripting language then you would be unable to do it. Your simple example works both ways.

tomED wrote: »

Firstly, if I could find another designer and developer rolled into one - I would hire them in a second. That's what I was before I set up my own business. But they are a rare thing nowadays.

Secondly, the OP asked what he should learn first, I suggested he learned HTML first, because at the end of the day he would ultimately be outputting his code to HTML. You said this wasn't entirely correct. Ok, so now that you are happily employed - would you have been if you didn't know HTML?

If I didn't know HTML/CSS I doubt I would have the job I have at this time, no. But again, I'll reiterate, I didn't tell the OP to just learn programming and ditch the HTML. I said that depending on what they want to do, learning programming first is an option. I learned programming first (php, perl etc), HTML second and then CSS. and I'm now one of those people "you'd hire in an instant". While it is the less common way of learning, it still clearly works.

You can sit in interviews all day and talk about what's going on in the background - I would NEVER hire anyone on this basis without actually seeing code.

If someone came in and told me "it does all this in the background", I'd want to see actual examples.

If you were given a job on this basis, it's your employer that has been very naive.

At the end of the day - I'm sure you didn't apply or the job without knowing the basics of HTML??

You're correct in that I know HTML and my employer knows this. However my employer also knows that I'm not a fantastic designer but am a pretty hardcore developer - I showed them some code from my projects and the full thing in action (with other folks design). They are quite happy to let me create the prototypes and middle-stage betas but let some freelance designer do the html/css for a highly-polished product. I would obviously work with this freelance developer to ensure they understand what the code is outputting etc

If you go back to the OP, he said he wanted to learn how to "design websites". You can't design a website if you only know PHP.

You're right, you can't design a website with only PHP. And if the OP did really mean design (as in style, layout etc) then they would be best of with HTML. If you wanted to end the disagreement by returning to the OP's question word for word then why didn't you do it at the start

p wrote: »

TouchingVirus - you're just being pedantic. You may 'technically' be correct, but realistically the original poster would be silly not to learn the basics of HTML.

I'm not being pedantic and as I stated clearly in my previous post, at no stage did I tell the OP or anybody that they shouldn't learn the basics of HTML. I merely stated my agreement with thedesigntribe (and disagreement with tomED) in that HTML does not have to be the first thing to learn.

Liam Byrne

tomED wrote: »

Firstly, if I could find another designer and developer rolled into one - I would hire them in a second. That's what I was before I set up my own business. But they are a rare thing nowadays.

Where should I send my CV to ?

Funny - I ended up having the same problem and ended up setting up my own business too!!!

Didn't realise I was THAT rare !!!! :cool:

Darragh29

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Where should I send my CV to ?

Funny - I ended up having the same problem and ended up setting up my own business too!!!

Didn't realise I was THAT rare !!!! :cool:

Could someone explain to me the difference between a web designer and a web developer????

tomED

TouchingVirus wrote: »

Without the HTML you couldn't do such a simple task.

Which was exactly the point I made and you completely overlooked it to go on about a different approach with two people involved instead of one.

TouchingVirus wrote: »

You learn most programming languages (or most people do) by using simple things like print() to output strings to screen. Programming languages such as perl, php etc also have these output commands.

I wouldn't say you learn it, but you certainly need something to output the results to, with PHP it's generally a browser - what do browsers display? yes HTML.

TouchingVirus wrote: »

HTML is not required to learn PHP and PHP is not required to learn HTML.

No-one ever said that.

TouchingVirus wrote: »

If I asked you to write me a HTML form that when submitted will input your text into a database and you didn't know a scripting language then you would be unable to do it. Your simple example works both ways..

Well isn't that blatantly obvious.........

TouchingVirus wrote: »

You're correct in that I know HTML and my employer knows this. However my employer also knows that I'm not a fantastic designer but am a pretty hardcore developer.

You're right, you can't design a website with only PHP. And if the OP did really mean design (as in style, layout etc) then they would be best of with HTML.

Knowing HTML isn't about being a fantastic designer. The whole point of learning HTML when starting off is to know exactly what all possibilities are in terms of what your programme can potentially output.

HTML is not about design, design is another days work altogether.

TouchingVirus wrote: »

If you wanted to end the disagreement by returning to the OP's question word for word then why didn't you do it at the start

Now I'm confused, you're the one that took it this route not me.
I was simply backing up my orinigal response that you disagreed with. as per below.....

TouchingVirus wrote: »

I'm not being pedantic and as I stated clearly in my previous post, at no stage did I tell the OP or anybody that they shouldn't learn the basics of HTML. I merely stated my agreement with thedesigntribe (and disagreement with tomED) in that HTML does not have to be the first thing to learn.

tomED

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Where should I send my CV to ?
Funny - I ended up having the same problem and ended up setting up my own business too!!!

PM me (if you are looking of course!) Always looking for someone good - especially all rounders!

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Didn't realise I was THAT rare !!!! :cool:

You're obviously part of the oldskool Liam!
Kids have it so easy nowadays, to get a job they just have to have one skill, unlike the oldskool

You know, when a web designer had to know how to design and code HTML, JavaScript, Perl/CGI, PHP, ASP, SQL etc etc

Not many of us left anymore!

tomED

Darragh29 wrote: »

Could someone explain to me the difference between a web designer and a web developer????

In our company, we have a clear definition of what the difference of roles mean.

Our web designer simply creates the look and feel, does usability testing etc on the designs. He will then either cut the design into HTML for the developer to code the site OR he will pass over the design to the developer to cut up and code the website.

But other companies have different definitions.

Ours is this way, because we don't want our designers messing with code they don't understand!

heggie

or developers with usability & design they don't understand presumably?

tomED

heggie wrote: »

or developers with usability & design they don't understand presumably?

exactly!

Darragh29

tomED wrote: »

In our company, we have a clear definition of what the difference of roles mean.

Our web designer simply creates the look and feel, does usability testing etc on the designs. He will then either cut the design into HTML for the developer to code the site OR he will pass over the design to the developer to cut up and code the website.

But other companies have different definitions.

Ours is this way, because we don't want our designers messing with code they don't understand!

Cheers Tom. I've been doing my own websites for the last number of years and from this, contacts started asking me to do sites for them. I used HTML and CSS to get to this stage but in the last few years I had to pick up PHP and SQL so I could use an online database for my own site and from that I started looking at Visual Studio and ASP.NET, I just never drew a line between the front end of what I was doing and the back end, I just learnt as I had to on a problem per problem basis, first setting up the site at the front end, menu creation, graphics and page layout and then online product databases and booking systems, etc.

I've decided to make a business out of it now as I want a career change and the feedback from people I did work for was positive and I seem to be very happy working away on my own doing design work. I was doing these jobs for friends up until now as favours as I saw it as a learning curve I was (which I know I'll always be on!), but I've made up my mind now to go at it from a business perspective. Just wanted to know what difference between design & development was in theory, I suppose everyone will have their own view on it, I've been doing both all along but didn't really see where the little line was between the two roles! Any advice on starting up a web design/development business??? I'm lucky that I already have my own business and have a good list of contacts who want work done that I can begin with, I've about 5 jobs that I can get working on immediately which will keep me busy for a few weeks...

tomED

Fair play to you Darragh - it's not an easy place to make money but you're on the right track with your existing contacts. This industry is really based on contacts. Most of our business comes from referrals or repeat work.

It's like any other business though, it's all about the customer, making sure they are happy. The one thing about this industry that differs a lot from others is clients expectations. Clients generally expect a "bebo" type website for next to nothing, so you really need to manage their expectations and reel them in from time to time.

Other than that - it's just hard work!

Best of luck with the new venture and feel free to contact me if you ever need any advice.

Darragh29

tomED wrote: »

Fair play to you Darragh - it's not an easy place to make money but you're on the right track with your existing contacts. This industry is really based on contacts. Most of our business comes from referrals or repeat work.

It's like any other business though, it's all about the customer, making sure they are happy. The one thing about this industry that differs a lot from others is clients expectations. Clients generally expect a "bebo" type website for next to nothing, so you really need to manage their expectations and reel them in from time to time.

Other than that - it's just hard work!

Best of luck with the new venture and feel free to contact me if you ever need any advice.

Hi Tom, I PM'd you there with a question...

p

Darragh29 wrote: »

Could someone explain to me the difference between a web designer and a web developer????

A designer works on the visual design of a site. Their skillset is in layout, typography, colour theory, use of style, image editing, usability, user psychology and general awareness of how to create a site that is easy to use, presents the correct impression of the client and addresses clients goals.

A developer is a computer programmer, a much more technical role. They usually take the designs the designer created and implement them via a programming language like PHP, Java or ASP.

Depending on the company there is areas of overlap where sometimes designers will do the HTML/CSS and sometimes developers will, but overall the above definitions should help you out.

tomED wrote: »

Firstly, if I could find another designer and developer rolled into one - I would hire them in a second. That's what I was before I set up my own business. But they are a rare thing nowadays.

Really, i'm surprised to hear that? Most people who do design & development rarely excel at either. I've found it's much better to have a team of two with one developer and one designer as they'll do a much better job, and do it faster (in total man hours) than someone who tries to both.


Darragh - if you're setting up a business, i'd advise you to start as a sole trader. It's easy and involves less paper work than setting up a company. Plus, you'll pay less tax that way too, at least at the start. Basically just do freelance work, and build it up from there. If you want to make decent money though, i'd advise you not to be a jack of all trades, if you team up with a good developer or designer you'll attract a much higher value client than if you try do everything yourself.

tomED

p wrote: »

Really, i'm surprised to hear that? Most people who do design & development rarely excel at either.

I agree with you completely. And that's why I was saying, if I could find ne, I'd hire one straight away!

p wrote: »

I've found it's much better to have a team of two with one developer and one designer as they'll do a much better job, and do it faster (in total man hours) than someone who tries to both.

For me it comes down to the size of the project. Brochure type sites or even similar size with a CMS are perfect for one person.

It works out much better for us to have one man dedicated to that one project.

On larger jobs, we'd definitely do the teamwork route and it is definitely quicker in man hours.

I think there's a little confusion on the above topic about what a designer or a developers role is.

I would expect my Developer to be able to code HTML & CSS and at least have a certain degree of "an eye for neatness".

Once the design is done - I don't see a need to bring the designer back into a project - only to overlook and make sure the developer hasn't been lazy.

The developer should be able to complete the project without much interaction with the designer.