Dynamic Web N00b

[Vardsy]

I have started to develop an interest in web design and recently my company has been hinting at redeveloping their site to include a section for users to leave their details (resume type setup) so that we have a pool of applicants to draw on when jobs arise.

All the pages I have ever designed have been static, that is I have never developed anything that references a database or allows users to enter data.

What would be the best start for a n00b to look into.

A friend has forwarded me a good guide to .asp for n00bs, and suggested that I try to set it up with an access database to get things started.

Can anyone suggest how I should get started or what their first dabble in this sort of thing was?

[Spingo]

Best way to get started is to jump in the deep end - literally.

Think fo a project and develop.

When I got started, I was in a similar position to you by the sounds of it - I could code static HTML, but not much else. I started coding ASP (mainly because we did ASP pages at my workplace at the time) and coded a complete CMS out of ASP. This CMS was the basis of a project site called "The Internet Is Broken, which a few long time ZGeekers will remember. This site led to the original TNG version of ZGeek before I decided to re-code the whole thing in PHP.

Whoops, got a bit sidetracked (and nostalgic) there....

If I could learn all over again, I'd actually learn PHP/MySQL over ASP/Access or SQL Server. The main reason is because there is an abundance of learning resources freely available online (www.php.net has a PHP Manula that is brilliant and the user-submitted comments are often chokka brim full of useful coding tips, and the MySQL manuals at www.mysql.org are damn good too - even if the HTML text for them is annoyingly too small). There are also a billions of open source PHP projects out there that you can literally grab the code for and extend in your own way (as long as you give them credit for what they did) - which means that you don't have to re-invent the wheel a lot of the time. PHP and MySQL will also run on just about any platform, where as ASP is realistically limited to the Windows domain (Yes, I know that you can get ChiliASP and variants for Linux, but they are a hassle in themself and don't offer the complete ASP functionality).

[lostreality]

PHP/MySQL and get acquainted with phpMyAdmin, that makes life a lot easier when dealing with databases.

http://www.php.net/
http://www.mysql.com/
http://www.phpmyadmin.net/
http://www.hotscripts.net/

[Bifrost]

Spingo is, as usual, very right.

You need to get your entire body wet here - forget your feet. When I started at me current company I had designed a few crap sites and ripped off one of Pirate's old ones - pre-ZGeek (because I was too crap to come up with my own shit), but then they put on the task of writing a VBA MS Access application which crawled network drives for redundant access databases.

What. The. Fuck.

I had never actually coded anything serious in my life. But I got to it, I asked the right people, I trawled the internet for info and I came out with a program which told the company what it needed to know.

There days I code Perl as a preference, but I also work in ASP, VB, a tiny bit of JSP and Java, JavaScript and, of course, HTML.

It's all about having to get something done and having to find out how to do it. You learn so much through trial and errror that you end up covering more bases thatn you ever thought you would.

[cyberwired]

I'm the same pretty much, my experience of php was a loop that displayed images in a table and created new cells, and I was just re-editting it, friend had done it for me
then a friend got asked if he knew someone who could make a php mysql database thing to add stuff to or something, he goes yeah yeah and says my name and then tells me "you can sort it out, just figure it out, you'll be sweet!"
I'd dabbled in programming a little but not much, went overtime a little but got it done in the end and didnt look too bad
what they are asking you to do sounds pretty simple, use php and mysql and you can install on your own pc (or ask around and you might get some free hosting space to play with...) and just play with adding to mysql :)

[gooey]

my first dabble with anything more than HTML was to create a profiles page for an IRC room. then i wrote a help application for one.net (One.Tel's Internet Company!!) and it was all on.

The only thing i would say about php is that there are a 1/4 of the jobs for php developers compared to .net developers. whilst this shouldnt stop you from teaching yourself open source stuff, you should take it into consideration when deciding what to learn when.