Where to start?

[Toby]

I am a newbie/oldbie website developer in a sort of unique point in
my
website development 'career'. I have been using Corel Paint Shop Pro
and Netscape Composer as my main tools.

Basically I start with a template (bitmap of my website), use Corel
which allows me to slice that template how I want and create an html
table. Then I add links and edit HTML using Netscape Composer. Very
crude, but somewhat effective.
I know there are better, more effective tools. I just would like
some
advice before I go out and spend a lot of money. Also, I am
interested in learning website development as a career. I am an
engineer by training, I know C/C++ as well as some other languages.
Of course I know HTML, and I have a little tiny bit of experience
(mostly just from some tutorials I've read) about PHP, MySQL, etc.
So my question is where to start? I basically have two goals:
1) To be able to quickly and easily develop my own ecommerce
websites.
2) To learn marketable website development skills so maybe I can get
a
real job doing this someday.
I was looking at templatemonster.com, and most of their templates say
you need Dreamweaver and Adobe Photoshop. I really don't want to
spend $800 on this though. I guess if I have to I will, but can
anyone recommend a cheaper way for me to achieve my goals?

[=?ISO-8859-15?Q?Iv=E1n_S=E1nchez_Ortega?=]

Toby wrote:

So my question is where to start? [...] I really don't want to
spend $800 on this though. I guess if I have to I will, but can
anyone recommend a cheaper way for me to achieve my goals?

Well, why not start by RTFM??

http://php.net/tutorial

Then, you might think about spending $40-$60 in a good PHP book, for
learning. Most books cover the same things, so almost any book with "PHP5"
in the cover will do.

Anyway, the PHP manual is *the* place to learn a few more things; some books
may be outdated (and most *will* be someday!), so always check the manual
if something looks or acts wrong.
Anything else, you might try asking here.

Hope it helps,
--
----------------------------------
Iván Sánchez Ortega -ivansanchez-algarroba-escomposlinux-punto-org-

Cuando no hay humildad, las personas se degradan.- Agatha Christie.

[Geoff Berrow]

Message-ID: <f4**********@hercules.cohp1from Iván Sánchez Ortega
contained the following:

>So my question is where to start? [...] I really don't want to
spend $800 on this though. I guess if I have to I will, but can
anyone recommend a cheaper way for me to achieve my goals?

Well, why not start by RTFM??

http://php.net/tutorial

Then, you might think about spending $40-$60 in a good PHP book, for
learning. Most books cover the same things, so almost any book with "PHP5"
in the cover will do.

Wrong place to start IMO. I can't see you making much sense of PHP
without a thorough knowledge of HTML and preferably CSS as well.
--
Geoff Berrow (put thecat out to email)
It's only Usenet, no one dies.
My opinions, not the committee's, mine.
Simple RFDs http://www.ckdog.co.uk/rfdmaker/

[Toby]

i have some experience with html and css (but i wouldnt say through by
a long shot!). i also agree php book is the way to go, i will
definitely be picking one of those up. since i do have quite a bit of
experience with other programming languages, i think i can figure out
php (given some time and hard work of course).

i guess what i was wondering was more about development tools. i would
really like a cheap visual integrated design environment (where i can
switch between a graphical view, code view, etc.) also, something
that i can run a 'virtual server' on my pc so i dont have to upload to
test every time i make a change to the php code. is this what
dreamweaver does? are there other cheaper tools that do this? or do
you guys just use text editors?

also, if anyone can recommend a good php book where they teach by
example (maybe something that includes a cd with a sample web site),
that would be helpful too.

[=?ISO-8859-15?Q?Iv=E1n_S=E1nchez_Ortega?=]

Toby wrote:

i have some experience with html and css (but i wouldnt say through by
a long shot!). i also agree php book is the way to go, i will
definitely be picking one of those up. since i do have quite a bit of
experience with other programming languages, i think i can figure out
php (given some time and hard work of course).

PHP is pretty easy to learn, IMHO.

i guess what i was wondering was more about development tools. i would
really like a cheap visual integrated design environment (where i can
switch between a graphical view, code view, etc.)

Most PHP programmers I know use a plain text editor (think notepad,
ultraedit, textpad, etc). Some use Zend Studio, and some of them other IDE.

also, something that i can run a 'virtual server' on my pc so i dont have
to upload to test every time i make a change to the php code.

It's much easier to install a real web server. Search the web for "WAMP"
(Windows+Apache+Mysql+PHP) for the easy way to go.

--
----------------------------------
Iván Sánchez Ortega -ivansanchez-algarroba-escomposlinux-punto-org-

http://acm.asoc.fi.upm.es/~mr/ ; http://acm.asoc.fi.upm.es/~ivan/
MSN:i_*************************@hotmail.com
Jabber:iv*********@jabber.org ; iv*********@kdetalk.net

[cbmeeks]

Once you get the grasp of PHP, check out Code Igniter. That's what I
am using to develop my photo sharing site. :-)

http://codeigniter.com/

http://www.eblarg.com

On Jun 6, 12:39 pm, Toby <[e-mail]:

I am a newbie/oldbie website developer in a sort of unique point in
my
website development 'career'. I have been using Corel Paint Shop Pro
and Netscape Composer as my main tools.

Basically I start with a template (bitmap of my website), use Corel
which allows me to slice that template how I want and create an html
table. Then I add links and edit HTML using Netscape Composer. Very
crude, but somewhat effective.

I know there are better, more effective tools. I just would like
some
advice before I go out and spend a lot of money. Also, I am
interested in learning website development as a career. I am an
engineer by training, I know C/C++ as well as some other languages.
Of course I know HTML, and I have a little tiny bit of experience
(mostly just from some tutorials I've read) about PHP, MySQL, etc.

So my question is where to start? I basically have two goals:
1) To be able to quickly and easily develop my own ecommerce
websites.
2) To learn marketable website development skills so maybe I can get
a
real job doing this someday.

I was looking at templatemonster.com, and most of their templates say
you need Dreamweaver and Adobe Photoshop. I really don't want to
spend $800 on this though. I guess if I have to I will, but can
anyone recommend a cheaper way for me to achieve my goals?

[Moot]

On Jun 6, 1:55 pm, Toby <[e-mail]:

i guess what i was wondering was more about development tools. i would
really like a cheap visual integrated design environment (where i can
switch between a graphical view, code view, etc.)

Someone, please correct me if I'm wrong, but there isn't any decent
development tool out there that merges graphical and code views and is
also a good PHP environment. Something like Dreamweaver will give you
the graphical, but the few times I've tried to do PHP with it were
very uncomfortable, to say the least. Any other fullblown PHP IDE
(personally, I use Zend Studio), on the other hand, offers little to
no graphical view support. In Zend, it's the html and that's it. You
want to see what it looks like, you load it in the browser.

also, something
that i can run a 'virtual server' on my pc so i dont have to upload to
test every time i make a change to the php code.

Google for XAMPP. Comes preconfigured with PHP, MySQL, Apache, and a
host of other things. An easy to use control panel lets you turn it
on/off at will to do local testing before uploading.

[JussiJ]

On Jun 7, 5:07 am, Iván Sánchez Ortega <ivansanchez-...@rroba-
escomposlinux.-.punto.-.orgwrote:

Most PHP programmers I know use a plain text editor (think
notepad, ultraedit,textpad, etc).

The Zeus IDE has support for the PHP langauge:

http://www.zeusedit.com/features.html

It does things like syntax highlighting, code folding,
integrated version control, project/workspace, class
browsing etc.

Zeus is shareware.

Jussi Jumppanen
Author: Zeus for Windows IDE

[Toby A Inkster]

Toby wrote:

also, something that i can run a 'virtual server' on my pc so i dont
have to upload to test every time i make a change to the php code.

There's nothing 'virtual' about that -- what you're describing *is* a
server. You can download servers from many places. Apache is by far the
best <http://httpd.apache.org>. Though you probably don't want to get it
directly from source -- there are various more user-friendly things
available which package it up, making it easier to install, and
pre-configuring a lot of things for you. If you're using Windows, Googling
for 'WAMP' will reveal all; for Mac 'MAMP'; and for Linux, Apache and PHP
probably came with your distribution.

is this what dreamweaver does?

No; and because it doesn't, it's pretty useless for anything more than
basic PHP development. If you're mostly writing HTML and only using PHP to
output very tiny chunks, then you can probably make reasonable use of
Dreamweaver. But as soon as you get into the realms of writing full pages
in PHP, Dreamweaver's design view becomes useless, and you're stuck in
code view -- which is basically an $800 glorified version of Notepad.
There's nothing wrong with glorified versions of Notepad, but you can
obtain them for a lot less than $800. (e.g. SciTE, NEdit, TextWranger.)

You know C++ you say. The best way for you to approach PHP is probably
almost as if it were C++. A PHP page is analogous to a command-line C++
program, which reads all its input from environment variables and outputs
only to STDOUT and STDERR; no GUI anything, and no access to STDIN; and
the output to STDOUT should be in HTML rather than plain text. Think of
PHP that way.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
[Geek of HTML/SQL/Perl/PHP/Python/Apache/Linux]
[OS: Linux 2.6.12-12mdksmp, up 103 days, 14:36.]

URLs in demiblog
http://tobyinkster.co.uk/blog/2007/05/31/demiblog-urls/

[-Lost]

Toby A Inkster wrote:

obtain them for a lot less than $800. (e.g. SciTE, NEdit, TextWranger.)

TextWrangler, I believe Mr. Inkster meant.

Anyway, live with having to open up a browser to view your code; run a
server to see your server-side programming render; and do away with
glorified WYSIWYG-type editors like FrontPage or Dreamweaver.

Try Nvu.

--
-Lost
Remove the extra words to reply by e-mail. Don't e-mail me. I am
kidding. No I am not.