Where to start?

[Fitty]

I've been wanting to learn the basics of web developement for a while now. I would describe my current skill level in HTML and VB as being very basic, and that's as far as I go at the moment. Seeing as I'm gonna have lots of spare time having finished school I figure it's as good a time as any to have a crack. I guess I'd need to learn HTML, ASP, more VB perhaps and probably some JavaScript.

Anyway, I'd like to know where I should begin, where I should progress to and how I should learn (I plan on fully self teaching rather than doing a course or something). Both books and internet would be good, I guess you'd find better stuff in print though. Any help would be much appreciated.

[Sashasword]

I don't know how far this tutorial takes you beyond the basic (couldn't be fucked following it all the way through), but from what I have read, it seems to be a goodie.
Even I can understand it.

http://www.accessv.com/~email/webpages/
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Here's a couple of others that I have bookmarked that I seemed to have thought they were good at the time.

http://www.dtp-aus.com/htmgnlrm.html

http://www.dtp-aus.com/htmlstrt.html
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This one's for kids, so it's gotta be easy to understand. I suppose. Never really looked at it yet.

http://www.lissaexplains.com/

Well, that's all the bookmarks I had. Hope there is the info you're looking for in there somewhere.

Good luck, and don't forget to tell us at ZGeek when you have something cool up to look at. :)

[AVataRR]

When I was doing Web Technology at uni, we were pointed to a really handy site called w3schools (http://www.w3schools.com/). It's not enough to get you to super saiyan level, but it's enough to get you started. I don't think printed books are any more useful than what's already out there on the web. But in the absence of a teacher, they probably have their advantages.

I'd like to steer you away from VB and ASP. Python and PHP are better.

[Lina]

Personally I found the Visual Quickstart Guides for HTML, javascript and perl/cgi to be excellent starting points and references.

[C0V3R]

ASP.NET is very nice to use. Awesome for building really scalable stuff if you need to, cutting edge and flexible technology.

Biggest downside is hosting may be a little extra $.

[kré]

a great starting point for learning HTML is www.webmonkey.com

i learnt it in my spare time at my previous job over 4 days, probably a total of 2 hours. their tutorials are really simple and straight forward.

[EtTuBrute]

I'd like to steer you away from VB and ASP. Python and PHP are better.

That statement is just plain stupid, try to learn as much as you can about all web technologies, don't let someone tell you that X is better than y, they all have their pros and cons and situations where one is the better solution. I'd start with the most common stuff, PHP, .NET, JAVA which can all be used to build kick ass dynamic web sites.

links

www.php.net - good start for learning php.
www.nusphere.com - used to have a PHP dev environment (including DB) for windows in a free download, not sure if they still do

www.asp.net - tutorials, free downloadable dev environment, tutorials and project white papers with code - which take you through a project from start to finish

[dwarfthrower]

Yep. Learn as much as you can about as wide a variety of tools as possible. The easiest way is just to throw yourself in head first and start mucking around.

Depending on what you've got at your disposal I'd set up one machine running PHP on Apache and another running ASP on IIS. Learn the strengths and weaknesses of both environments.

In terms of technologies - the future of web development lies in web services, interoperablity and XML. So read up on XML, SOAP, XSLT and Web Services.