Wanting to learn Web Development - where to beging?

[Dr. DiegO]

Another of my threads here, another of my questions, but this time I'm seeking advice. I want to learn Web Development, to make my own website. It doesn't have any involvement with recent events on the web. it is something I wanted to do from time ago, having an own site to post my work and stuffs with more control and... I dunno, making the web experience less boring.

I know that making a website from scratch is not an easy task and I need to know how to do stuffs like: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, the tools and frameworks, the domain, the costs and maintenance. but I think, as an artist, having more control of your content and presentation makes it worthy. after all, that was the way artist used to post online before. they are still artist websites out there but mostly work like portfolios and nothing else, I like the more personal approach to express myself. sounds dramatic and corny, but in this times where everything looks and feels the same without much variation I want to choose something different.

What I'm looking here is some advice on where to begin and know where to find resources and knowledge and what are the options.

[Adios]

sounds dramatic and corny

Its not tho.

GoDaddy webspace without SSL certs is something like $16~$18 per month, I forgot how much domain names were; maybe $30-60 per year? But they are reputably not the best anymore.Admittedly most people have moved sharing their linktrees and use sites like pixiv, to store their art, but premade stuff is not for everyone.

HTML, CSS, JavaScript,

There are free internet libraries you can get books for some of these languages; like actual books, (not websites full of tutorials) , but a lot of them have been taken down by the fbi, altho there are still some around; I will ask a friend tho. O'Reilly has made some good coding books, but they are $30-40 bucks.

Stanford had a full course they put online, cs106.. It's also on youtube.

And be prepared to be really organized with your coding projects, and try to invest in external harddrives to back stuff up; WD sells an external 1TB drive for $80 bucks; some people prefer cloud storage though. Above everything else: If you keep trying; Don't ever give up; Do stuff.

I'll be back with a better post later.

[Dr. DiegO]

sounds dramatic and corny

Its not tho.

GoDaddy webspace without SSL certs is something like $16~$18 per month, I forgot how much domain names were; maybe $30-60 per year? But they are reputably not the best anymore.Admittedly most people have moved sharing their linktrees and use sites like pixiv, to store their art, but premade stuff is not for everyone.

HTML, CSS, JavaScript,

There are free internet libraries you can get books for some of these languages; like actual books, (not websites full of tutorials) , but a lot of them have been taken down by the fbi, altho there are still some around; I will ask a friend tho. O'Reilly has made some good coding books, but they are $30-40 bucks.

Stanford had a full course they put online, cs106.. It's also on youtube.

And be prepared to be really organized with your coding projects, and try to invest in external harddrives to back stuff up; WD sells an external 1TB drive for $80 bucks; some people prefer cloud storage though. Above everything else: If you keep trying; Don't ever give up; Do stuff.

I'll be back with a better post later.

You are a true one 

[Adios]

I'll be back with a better post later.

Here is my second post:
Domain -- 32.99 1 year (Godaddy)
Webspace -- 15.99 1 month (Godaddy) (100 GB storage, 1 website)

There are far cheaper services like HostGator
Hostgator costs 12.00 per month for:
10 websites
10 GB SSD storage

You can shop around, your mileage may vary.

I went with Godaddy in a pinch one christmas, after I got hacked and my friend would no longer host me; I just needed the space and I'm not fussed with things like php, wordpress, cgi-bin, all that stuff I don't really need. (If you don't want to get hacked, don't advertise your website in an irc channel topic in 2014, or any year really)

Free Coding resources that aren't books:
https://www.w3schools.com/html/
https://www.w3schools.com/js/default.asp
https://www.w3schools.com/w3css/default.asp
(free)

Coding Resources that are books, but aren't free:
https://www.oreilly.com/
https://www.dummies.com/
https://www.wiley.com/en-ca
($20 to $50)


Free resources, that are books:
https://web.archive.org/ (recently hacked & ddos'd)
https://www.google.com/search?q=libgen (libgen anything)
https://www.xdcc.eu/search.php?searchkey=for+dummies (IRC XDCC channels).

You will need a client like mIRC for the last one. You can also use IRC to find libgen resources.
I'd include a protip suggesting you take any of the publishers listed and search their book titles.
In the links above, but that's a no brainer; you get the idea.
Libgen is a free library I learned about on reddit.

I think that's the end of my second post.
-I don't condone piracy or torrenting, so buy books/media whenever you can.
-None of these resources are going to mean anything, if you don't do anything.
-Do stuff; Do stuff whenever you can, preferably when you are bored, and return to it later, after you aren't. Creatively do stuff

That last tip is really important; Make the time to do stuff; and you will be rewarded.
It is really hard to do stuff in this reward seeking, validation prone internet of today.
Even if your output is utter shit, just remember to return to it one day

And I think that's it from me for now.

P.S. NEW LINK: This is probably one of the better free guided resources available to learn and covers JScript and HTML, most of the things you mentioned.

https://www.theodinproject.com/

[Dr. DiegO]

I'll be back with a better post later.

Here is my second post:
Domain -- 32.99 1 year (Godaddy)
Webspace -- 15.99 1 month (Godaddy) (100 GB storage, 1 website)

There are far cheaper services like HostGator
Hostgator costs 12.00 per month for:
10 websites
10 GB SSD storage

You can shop around, your mileage may vary.

I went with Godaddy in a pinch one christmas, after I got hacked and my friend would no longer host me; I just needed the space and I'm not fussed with things like php, wordpress, cgi-bin, all that stuff I don't really need. (If you don't want to get hacked, don't advertise your website in an irc channel topic in 2014, or any year really)

Free Coding resources that aren't books:
https://www.w3schools.com/html/
https://www.w3schools.com/js/default.asp
https://www.w3schools.com/w3css/default.asp
(free)

Coding Resources that are books, but aren't free:
https://www.oreilly.com/
https://www.dummies.com/
https://www.wiley.com/en-ca
($20 to $50)


Free resources, that are books:
https://web.archive.org/ (recently hacked & ddos'd)
https://www.google.com/search?q=libgen (libgen anything)
https://www.xdcc.eu/search.php?searchkey=for+dummies (IRC XDCC channels).

You will need a client like mIRC for the last one. You can also use IRC to find libgen resources.
I'd include a protip suggesting you take any of the publishers listed and search their book titles.
In the links above, but that's a no brainer; you get the idea.
Libgen is a free library I learned about on reddit.

I think that's the end of my second post.
-I don't condone piracy or torrenting, so buy books/media whenever you can.
-None of these resources are going to mean anything, if you don't do anything.
-Do stuff; Do stuff whenever you can, preferably when you are bored, and return to it later, after you aren't. Creatively do stuff

That last tip is really important; Make the time to do stuff; and you will be rewarded.
It is really hard to do stuff in this reward seeking, validation prone internet of today.
Even if your output is utter shit, just remember to return to it one day

And I think that's it from me for now.

P.S. NEW LINK: This is probably one of the better free guided resources available to learn and covers JScript and HTML, most of the things you mentioned.

https://www.theodinproject.com/

Thanks for all the help, man. I really appreciate it.

[Void]

Before you jump in the deep end and put something online, experiment with making something locally and hosting it on your own machine. Lets you learn without any of the strings and limitations that come with setting up something on a hosted server.

Docker and XAMPP are the ones I've personally used before (with XAMPP being what I use to serve to the rest of my LAN). XAMPP is going to be pretty similar to what you'd encounter in most web services, since Apache is like 40% of the normal web.

[Dr. DiegO]

Before you jump in the deep end and put something online, experiment with making something locally and hosting it on your own machine. Lets you learn without any of the strings and limitations that come with setting up something on a hosted server.

Docker and XAMPP are the ones I've personally used before (with XAMPP being what I use to serve to the rest of my LAN). XAMPP is going to be pretty similar to what you'd encounter in most web services, since Apache is like 40% of the normal web.

Perfect, thanks

[moot]

* You don't need to pay for Godaddy for SSL or hosting, there are ton of non-shady hosting service with free tier like Vercel, Cloudflare Pages or Github Pages. They will give you free SSL, which should be fine. They do impose limit, but it's more than enough for simple portofolio.

* For domain, sadly you have to pay for that, the cheapest that i know is the popular .com which is around $10-$15, depends on the provider. You can use the other domain tho, but they might be more expensive.

* These hosting services are kind of different in how to upload your website online and how to connect/use the domain you own. You don't need to learn all the features they have, to learn how to host your website there just search "How to upload a website in (whatever service you use)" on youtube and there are fuck ton of tutorials there.

* You only need to learn the basic HTML+CSS, I don't think you need Javascript, unless you want to make some fancy thing on it. I have made a website only with CSS + HTML, it looks nice enough.

* If you want to learn how to write code for web in HTML+CSS (or +JS), you can use Google, W3School, StackOverflow (Use this if you get an issue; usually, if you use google this would be the first or second result) or ChatGPT (ChatGPT should be fine when it comes to coding in CSS + HTML, tho sometimes it make funny mistake and make sure to use it as a QnA bot).

* If you want to try to make a website locally, you don't need docker or xampp in my opinion. I have use both so I can say, learning how to use them would waste your time. You only need a browser + code editor like Visual Studio Code or Notepad++ (google it). You can use windows notepad, but you will torture yourself if you do use it to code.

[Void]

* If you want to try to make a website locally, you don't need docker or xampp in my opinion. I have use both so I can say, learning how to use them would waste your time.

Using XAMPP is literally just doing the default installer settings and pressing the start button in terms of difficulty.

You only need a browser + code editor like Visual Studio Code or Notepad++ (google it). You can use windows notepad, but you will torture yourself if you do use it to code.

You can serve HTML and script with just a browser, but anything involving PHP is going to need a server to listen to calls. Visual Studio can do this, and it's simple, but it's not really similar to how a production environment behaves. Using a service to handle spinning up Apache and MySQL just like how a web server would do it is pretty helpful to minimize how much fiddle you need to put in once you move beyond just testing stuff out.

[moot]

You can serve HTML and script with just a browser, but anything involving PHP is going to need a server to listen to calls. Visual Studio can do this, and it's simple, but it's not really similar to how a production environment behaves. Using a service to handle spinning up Apache and MySQL just like how a web server would do it is pretty helpful to minimize how much fiddle you need to put in once you move beyond just testing stuff out.

Well, when I write it. I don't think he would need a backend language PHP if he wants to make a website to express himself like neocities. I think PHP would be useful only if OP wants to build a Content Management System on it, which for a website merely to "express OP-self" (sounds like neocities to me) it's not a must.

[Void]

I dunno, PHP is pretty damn useful for loads of things, especially for dynamic websites that want to load resources or tables from somewhere else without relying on AJAX, or don't want the end user to actually see your script's source or configuration (unlike HTML/CSS/JS, PHP is server-side, so the end user will only ever see it's output, not source).

OP said they wanted to learn, so I don't see why they wouldn't prepare themselves a sandbox to play and learn in that's pretty close to what they'd get with a remote server.

[SquareoftheLightOnes]

What would be a good way to estimate server and bandwidth costs if you wanted to host a site on your own machine? Let's use a vanilla phpBB forum with no modifications or extensions and an average of 20-50 users a day for a month as an example. What would that cost in bandwidth usage monthly?

[Dr. DiegO]

here are my baby steps