Whats next to learn for me?

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brandontw

New Member
So i spent a couple months figuring out how to design a website, out of necessity. I spent a long time messing with dreamweaver and WSIWYG editors, I didnt know anything about HTML or CSS, but i was savvy enough to figure our how to go into the code in notepad here and there to change something small.

Soon i started finding snippets of code that i suspected to be unnecessary, so i'd try deleting them, and realize that they were infact not needed. Then i ditched the WSIWYG editors and found some html/css templates and started messing with them until the template was hardly recognizable.

Then i just ditched the templates, got notepad++ and wrote my own site from scratch (with help from w3schools.com of course)

I've got a fairly decent knowledge of html and css now, and how they work together. Ive also figured out how to use google analytics, and how to implement a few basic jquery plugins, as well as embed fonts in my site.

But i know I'm barely scratching the surface, and i feel a bit out of the loop having a plain old html/css only when i see sites around that i dont even understand how they are working. Probably using php... ive seen some .jsp sites too.

So what should be next on my list to learn? PHP probably? Javascript? What are these used for, and why do i need them if i can pretty much do everything i need with html and css?
 
CaldwellYSR

CaldwellYSR

Member
I am in the same boat as you. I went about it a little bit differently but I do most everything with html, css, and some jquery. I feel like if you can do everything you need to do with that then there's no point learning more unless you just want to. I know php and asp is used for form information but I haven't really ran into a situation where I needed it. Javascript is always good to learn but I have a really hard time learning it.
 
CaldwellYSR

CaldwellYSR

Member
LouTheDesigner said:
I'd go with learning PHP and SQL at the same time. Or, learn Wordpress.

-Lou
Click to expand...

What is the benefit of php and sql? I cannot find a good description of either of them anywhere. I've read about them on w3schools but it just confuses me. I know that's a very broad question but I really have no clue with either of those.
 
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LouTheDesigner

New Member
Well if you want to store information (such as a site member's information -- name, e-mail, phone, etc.), I'd recommend you use a SQL table to do so. (google phpMyAdmin). If you want to display any SQL information back to that user, then you'll need to connect to the SQL database via PHP to extract and display that information.

Just think of SQL as "tables that store things," and think of PHP as "a way to integrate the hidden stored things with what is displayed to the user."

PHP's mailto() function will allow for Contact Forms -- to give a concrete example.

I'd do this with .NET and C#, but PHP and SQL are the places to begin. I highly suggest the cheap membership to lynda.com to learn about these technologies.

-Lou
 
CaldwellYSR

CaldwellYSR

Member
Yeah I've seen people talking about lynda all over these forums. Unfortunately I'm REALLY broke and can't spend money on stuff for website design. Even if it's gonna teach me alot I just don't have the money to spend right now. I barely have a computer (although I should sell it and get an older pc instead of this new macbook but hey I got it for free so...).
 
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bcee

New Member
Really depends on your goals. If you want to push your front-end skills further then learn Javascript and a lib like jQuery, it can work wonders for a site. Also some HTML5 and CSS3 couldn't hurt.

If you want to delve into backend development learn PHP and SQL, IMO they are the best.
 
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