i'm not looking to make a career out of it, but i'd like to learn more on how to build a site for specific needs I have.

is there a good course to take?

11/19/2008 5:14:52 PM

and i don't mean like html bullshit... i know all the basic stuff like that.

11/19/2008 5:15:16 PM

No, there are a million good books and free resources on the web, though. What are you looking to do?

11/19/2008 5:18:37 PM

Don't take a web design course at NCSU.

11/19/2008 5:22:53 PM

there's some basic bullshit in E115

11/19/2008 5:38:53 PM

Construction or design? They're not the same thing.

11/19/2008 6:08:08 PM

construction... i want to make a page for a user base of around 100 where they can log on, have profiles, maybe include a message board, some blogging, etc... (yes i know it sounds generic but it really does have a purpose!)

11/19/2008 7:52:56 PM

i have the basic design of how it will work in my head, but i just don't know the languages or details that i need.

11/19/2008 7:53:39 PM

http://www.opensourcecms.com/

11/19/2008 7:54:38 PM

Joomla, Wordpress, Drupal,

Actually, just go get wordpress. You don't need to learn anything.

11/19/2008 8:50:18 PM

right, but i'd LIKE to learn it.

11/19/2008 11:08:35 PM

Start:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering

Get some books.

Next read up on:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_structure and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming

Buy books, read them.

Then you can pick yourself a language to learn. PHP, C#, Java, C++, ObjectiveC, Python, Ruby, et al. Find one you fancy, and buy a book.

Then lastly:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_database

Buy a book or two, you'll probably want to focus on SQL based texts.

Then pick yourself a DB to learn. MySQL will probably be your best choice, but PostGreSQL, MSSQL, Oracle, DB2 and several others are out there.

Then, you will want a development environment.

Visual Studio and Eclipse are probably the best two options, but for Web languages, Dreamweaver is also a viable alternative.

In probably less than two years, you'll have enough of an understanding of the basics to start building your own CMS from scratch.

[Edited on November 19, 2008 at 11:49 PM. Reason : .]

11/19/2008 11:48:41 PM

Click the link I posted above and check out the options under "Portals" on the left side menu. You'll find something that meets your needs.

Noen's right, though. If you don't know anything past barebones HTML, you're a long, long, long way from doing this all on your own. Your best option is to start with a pre-fab CMS.

11/20/2008 12:10:29 AM

If you already know basic html/css and how to build a basic site and layout. Buy a book on php that has a section also about MYSQL. You can also probably find a free php cms (content management system)

11/20/2008 12:21:36 AM

find yourself some O'Reilly books.

profit.

11/20/2008 12:58:59 AM

thanks for the input... noen... i realize how much I have to do... I have some experience in C++ and Java.

the point of this is not the end product... I want to learn how to do it, and looking for a few good starting points.

11/20/2008 12:24:03 PM

My advice is to use as few frameworks as possible.

11/20/2008 9:10:01 PM

some of the javascript frameworks are awesome though

though yes, from a learning perspective it's best to start from scratch

11/21/2008 7:55:57 AM

http://www2.acs.ncsu.edu/reg_records/crs_cat/GC.html#GC340

11/21/2008 5:39:01 PM

do yourself a favor when you pick up something like PHP, Java etc...and learn a MVC Framework! (Model - View - Controller)...you'll thank me later. Codeigniter is awesome for PHP and Spring for Java.

11/21/2008 5:53:47 PM

^Hence why I suggested he learn the theory of software engineering, OO development and RDBMS first. Model-View-Controller is an extremely hard concept to master in practice unless you have a very very good knowledge of the reasoning and theory behind it. It's very easy to break the model, but have working code

11/21/2008 5:56:08 PM

which is also why i added...."when you pick up something like PHP, Java etc" because as you say, he should have a good understanding of the concept before he starts actually learning the code.

11/21/2008 8:12:13 PM

Which is also why I added to not learn it through a web design course at NCSU, they won't teach you how to program, notice that the internet course is through college of graphic design ... it'll look good (absolutely), but not be proper. There is a big difference there.

11/22/2008 1:32:46 AM