Are you new to web development? May be you are planning to create a website of your own, but does not know how to start and where to start. Here are some information which will help you to proceed further with your website development
First you need to decide whether you are going to write code and develop a website from scratch or planning to use any of the existing content management system (CMS ). I’ll discus about both the approach in this article.
Web Development from scratch:
If you are planning to develop a website from scratch then you need to learn at least HTML, Java Script, CSS . Using these languages you can create only static web pages. If you want your web page to interact with a database like MS access, MY SQL or SQL Server, then you need to learn SQL Quires and one of the scripting language like ASP.NET, PHP, etc.. There are few good websites which will help you to learn these languages. Below
- asp.net: If you are very specific to create a website with Microsoft technologies then this website will have all the learning materials you need to create web pages. You may also need to learn about MS Access or SQL Server.
- MS Access: If you want to use MS Access database along with asp.net then for
- www.w3schools.com: This website has everything basic to create a website. It has all the learning tools needed to create a basic website. It has basic tutorial for HTML, CSS, JavaScript, ASP.NET, SQL, etc. I consider this as the first and the best learning portal for the beginners to go and learn various web languages and start developing a website.
- For details about MS access go here.
- SQL Server: If you are planning to use SQL Server with asp.net the go here.
You may also want to know about the User Interface Frameworks available. User Interface Framework helps you to designing the UI very fast and provides UI consistency through the web application. Read my article on User Interface Frameworks for Web Developers.
Building web site using Content Management System (CMS):
Nowadays in this fast world building websites from scratch is a waste of time. There are many free content management systems available. You need to choose one of them and customize it a bit for your need and create your website. It will take just few minutes to few hours to build website using CMS. Below are few of the popular free content management system.
- WordPress is the top free content management system. It’s very easy to use and does not need any kind of software development skills to use it. This will be the best choice for a beginner. Read more about installing WordPress website/blog on godaddy hosting.
- Joomala! is the next popular free CMS system. It’s a good system but not as easy as WordPress. It’s good to develop robust websites. To know more about Joomala! go here.
- Drupal is another well-known CMS. To know more about Drupal go here.
- DotNetNuke (DNN) has both free and commercial versions of CMS. This is a popular content management system among the Dot Net developers. DotNetNuke and be used to build very robust websites with thousands of pages. To know more about DotNetNuke go here. To read my other articles on DNN, go here.
My personal Suggestion:
If you are interested in learning few web development languages and scripts, then I will suggest you to go for developing the website from scratch. Developing a website from scratch will help you to learn a lot and helps to get advanced skills including server-side languages.
If learning software is not your priority and if you want to build a website fast, then use one of the content management system.
I have used both DotNetNuke and WordPress for my websites. I prefer DotNetNuke for a robust website and WordPress for blog kind of website. This website (www.MyTecBits.com) is powered by WordPress.