[mudz]

Distinguished DT denizens,

I am a web designer specialised in designing layouts and interface, who usually outsourced the coding bits - cms, news pages, galleries, etc.
I would like to start learning how to make an interactive website entirely on my own, implementing content management, galleries, news systems and the like into my own designs. I have read about ajax, web 2.0, ruby on rails, php etc and I am a bit confused, being a beginner. As of end of 2007, what do you think would be the more sensible and intelligent starting point to begin my learning process? Which language should I learn? Should I learn Ruby? Start with PHP first? Again, my aim would be to be able to produce something like veerle's blog, or mezzoblue, entirely on my own. Make the things under the bonnet, as well as the bodywork.
Thanks for your input, folks.

[andyf]

I am not a good coder but i know a bit As you are newbie i will suggest you to start with PHP and then go for Javascripts and rubies....
you will have to work hard for getting your hands on them

All the best.

[Snowshiro]

I think you're going down the right route. Being a multi-disciplined designer (creative and technical) will certainly enable you to take on more work, and have more overall control of your projects.

I think really unless you want to specialize in a particular area, you can't go that far wrong starting out with thoroughly grounding yourself in the standard LAMP environment (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP). This is by far the most popular set of technologies in current usage and will allow you to tackle pretty much anything. Googling any of these will produce literally thousands of beginners' guides. I'd probably add a smattering of Javascript to that, although once you've learned the fundamental principles of programming with a language like PHP, you should be able to apply your understanding to languages like Javascript and pick up what you need to know, when you need to know it.

[mudz]

Thank you very much, Snowshiro. And I love Marmite too.

[funkyprem]

marmite is the devils spunk

[mudz]

I wonder who jerked him off then

[funkyprem]

we're close but we're not that close!

[mudz]

ah ah

[Snowshiro]

Originally Posted by mudz

Thank you very much, Snowshiro. And I love Marmite too.

Try getting it where I live. You'd rip someones tongue out for a spoonful.

[haku]

Id rip my own tongue out if I had a spoonful!

[mudz]

But you have Tempeh, and Kombu seaweed. That's quite an achievement!

[Snowshiro]

What the monkeys is tempeh?

[mudz]

Tempeh

ç_-

(monocle face)

[demt]

javascripts fun but the gallery is gonna be a lot of scripting n design

[wheedwacker]

you should learn PHP or RubyOnRails

check out some of the comparisons between them online

I use PHP myself, but to each his own.

[iblastoff]

if you want to reproduce the basic functionality of a blog, that should be easy enough with php/mysql. as for full functionality of veerles blog though, she runs the cms expressionengine. probably be a bit of a long way to write something like that :P