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[Lutharion]

Ok not sure if this would be the place to put such a thread...

I have somewhat limited HTML skills and I am trying to learn some new stuff but wanted to gets suggestions from those who may be far savvier than I. Or any suggestions on different programming languages.

My friend and I eventually want to put up our own site with a webcomic we have been working on. I am trying to figure out some finer points of web programming. Creating a forum like this for example or a merchandise sales page like Jeph has set up for QC...

If not HTML then what should I use?

Any suggested programs for creating one or uploading stuff? I don't truly care about price... most people don't pay for programs these days anyway. I probably will though.

Any overall suggestions would be grand. Even books I should look into for such suggestions.

Not worrying about domain and stuff at the moment.

Thanks all.

[jhocking]

php

[Lutharion]

PHP? Um... could you elaborate slightly? Like where should I go to start learning it?

[jhocking]

I don't know if this is really the best place to start learning PHP, but this is generally the best place to look for information about web development, and there certainly are tutorials on PHP:

http://www.webmonkey.com/

[decklin]

I think a little clarification of basic concepts might help...

This page right here is HTML, as is the QC store, as is, well, everything else. That's all your browser sees and knows how to deal with.

How that HTML is put together (if not by hand) is where you get into "web programming". Here it's PHP. Elsewhere it may be Rails, Twisted, Mason, ColdFusion, JSP... etc.

However, none of these are "instead of" HTML. All of these approaches speak HTML and to various degrees can free you with the minutae of dealing with its stupidities, but you still do need to understand what your programs are going to be outputting.

Any kind of procedural abstraction (aka "programming") is much more difficult than semantic abstraction (aka "marking up" HTML). Get comfortable with the latter first before getting in over your head.

As for matters of personal taste... PHP is decent and easy enough to start with if you know how to program and don't want to fuck around designing anything, but I'd be wary of suggesting it to someone who doesn't already know better because as a language it's rather ugly. Other people will have different opinions on this.

This is the most important part, though: spend all your money on books. The only software worth using is free.

(Aside: I can't believe Webmonkey is still kicking! That takes me back about a decade.)

[Lutharion]

Hmm, still a bit confused. I guess I should just start practicing with a few thinsg for a while. Any suggestions other than the webmonkey to get started?

[Valrus]

Start with HTML. Once you feel you've got it down pretty well and you can code a basic website without having to look up too many tags, try to pick up some CSS.

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. It's basically used to take the formatting out of an HTML page, and to make sure that you don't have font tags and shit every time you want to change your page's appearance. Once you get a good CSS page, you're set, and you won't have to worry about formatting your HTML pages anymore. Also, you can use one CSS page for multiple HTML pages, thus ensuring that all pages of your site have a consistent style.

[decklin]

What Valrus said.

CSS is very important if you're going to be doing any sort of dynamic content, because it lets you keep your style information (how this should look, where it should appear, etc) separate from the actual information on the page.

For a comic site, for example, there would be a consistent style included on all pages, but for each comic page your PHP or whatever would spit out the HTML to include a different comic.

For books on CSS, I like Eric Meyer, but that's a bit intermediate-advanced. You would probably get the most out of _Beginning Web Programming with HTML, XHTML, and CSS_ by Duckett.

(I am biting! my! tongue! about w3schools )

[Valrus]

(I am biting! my! tongue! about w3schools )

Um, this is another one of those instances where I just did a quick Google search and linked to the first result. So don't take my comment as an endorsement of the quality of w3schools.

Honestly, though, anyone who can't figure out how to find a CSS tutorial using Google probably isn't going to have too good a time actually learning CSS. Or HTML. Or, for that matter, making a web comic. Or, probably, chewing food.

Anyway, my point is that I won't be offended if you offer other suggestions for places to learn CSS without paying money for the privilege. There are probably some really good tutorials out there, I just don't know what any of them are. For some reason. Where the hell did I learn CSS, anyway?

[jhocking]

Where the hell did I learn CSS, anyway?

You probably learned it the same way I did: not from any one source, but little bits and pieces from a couple dozen pages, found through google whenever you had something additional to look up.


@lutharion: decklin is right about the relationship of HTML to programming.  It's not an "instead of" thing; you're always dealing with HTML.  The difference between a site that uses PHP (or whatever) and a site that doesn't is who wrote the HTML, you or the computer.  Which, considering you're just starting out, means that you should definitely get comfortable with HTML first.  As they've been saying, the skills are a pretty logical progression: first learn HTML, then start learning about CSS, then turn to web programming.

Incidentally, this progression nicely mirrors the progression of a website, so have no fear about starting your site with primitive skills.  The advantages of CSS only really kick in once you have a lot of content (ie. pages,) and that's even more true of programming.  When you're just starting a webcomic, you don't have many pages to deal with so writing all the HTML by hand is perfectly manageable.

[Luke]

Where the hell did I learn CSS, anyway?

You probably learned it the same way I did: not from any one source, but little bits and pieces from a couple dozen pages, found through google whenever you had something additional to look up.

That's how I taught myself HTML. And Javascript, now that I think of it.

My entire website (minus the forum, which is phpBB) is composed of HTML inside a sort of Javascript shell. This causes a problem with Firefox users in some places, naturally. I need to learn PHP sometime in the near future.

[Hoverthrone]

First learn HTML. It's the foundation language. Do yourself a favor and get in the habit of programming in XHTML-strict right from the beginning. HTML is an easy language; all you have to do is remember to close your tags and stuff like that. You can pick up a book from the library if you want, but for HTML, you're probably better off with Webmonkey or W3Schools or a human tutor or something like that. Memorize all the basics, and then go on to CSS.

You can learn CSS on your own in about half an hour. It is the easiest language there is.

After that, you'll probably want to learn PHP, but you'll be able to get away using pre-made packages like PHPBB (which powers this forum) and a comic-management system.