Hello guys My name is zach im a 17 year old junior at Hidden valley high school. Im currently taking a class on webdesign and really enjoy it and would like to further increase my knowledge of programming this summer. Earlier this year i took a semester of VB and had a good time but decided to switch over to Dream weaver half way through the year (the class im in now) simply because I just wanted to try somthing new, VB wasnt hard for me but it wasnt easy eather which is probebly why i enjoyed it so much... I could do it but it wasnt redicliusly hard. I also took a class on C++ earlier and did not really enjoy it i got a B on the over all semester grade(pretty bad for me) and decided to drop it due to the lack of teaching and instruction givin by our instructor who is more like a babsiter/ supervisor then an actual teacher. However I really do enjoy Website building and I was wondering if some one could give me the names and / or authors of some good books on Webdesign and how to better expand my knowledge of HTML, CSS and XML. I also was wondering what languages are used to code the stuff like login scripts in websites ? what books should i get to learn about this stuff? Are they mostly coded with PHP and mysql stuff or java? Any help would be much appreciated and if you know of any great websites about building websites/ and forum communities please help me out im kinda new to this stuff but want to learn.

 

 

 

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Html is used to code web sites for presentation on a Web Browser, so you should learn Html and Css (Cascading Style Sheets) in order to write Web Pages.
PHP is used to present Html for serving to the Browser (basicly, php writes the lines of Html) and interacting with files or databases on the server. As such, it is called a "server-side" scripting language and is one of the most popular methods for coding dynamic web sites.
Mysql is a typical Database used for storing Web Site information.

There are several good PHP authors around. One I like is Larry Ullman and his books cover both php and mysql, either singly or as a combined approach. I would recommend his PhP and Mysql for Dynamic Web Sites 2nd Edition.

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The 'behind the scenes' part of a website can be written in many different languages. PHP is probably one of the most widely used, and you can find out about it here. That site also lists all of the functions in PHP and how to use them. ASP, CGI and Perl are all also used in many sites, along with Java for some of the larger sites usually.

As for the books, I can suggest WikiBooks to you. If you've never used it, it has books written by users with tutorials and good explanations. The only problem is that sometimes people abandon the tutorials or they are wrong.
The '...For Dummies' books are also great, and often contain a CD with sample scripts and helpful stuff. They are also layed out well and make sense. You can find the books here: PHP & MySQL, HTML, XML and Java.

You also need to bear in mind that there are also different database architechtures: MySQL, MS-SQL, SqLite, PostgreSQL etc... You might want to look at each of these and their advantages and disadvantages.

 

 

 

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