Newbie asking how to make a dynamic website

[phpnewbie_newbie]

Hi,

 

I just started learning php for website design. I am interested in making a 'dynamic' website, something like a bbs, so people can register, log in, start a topic, leave comments, and so on. Or say, I want to build something very similar to this website.

I've had zero website design experience before, thus I have no idea how to make such a 'dynamic' website. Do I need a database (e.g., mysql) for storing all the information (user account, user's topics/comments)? and how can I make the front-end webpage reflect the changes in the database, do I need widgets for this?

I would appreciate if you can provide some suggestions, or some reading materials for me to start with.

 

Thank you!

[Jacques1]

First off: When the forum title says “Comments & Suggestions”, and there's a red blinking, scrolling message that says “This is NOT a help forum!”, then this isn't the right place for your PHP questions. This is the help forum, which is why it says “PHP Coding Help”.

 

As to your question: It's not a good approach to jump to a complex project when you have no idea how PHP works. You can set the bulletin board as your long-term goal, but in the first few months, concentrate on learning the basics:

• HTML (and I mean valid HTML5, not the tag soup that many PHP people produce)
• CSS and possibly JavaScript
• SQL
• the basics of the HTTP protocol (a lot of web programmers skip that part, which is a very bad idea)
• form processing
• sessions
• performing queries, preferrably with the PDO interface
• security (how to prevent common attacks like SQL injections, cross-site scripting etc., how to safely hash passwords, ...)

Unfortunately, there aren't many good resources for PHP. Most of the “tutorials” on the Internet and even many books are horrible. So you have to be willing to do extensive research (which includes RTFM) and think for yourself. A book may be helpful to get an overview, but chances are you'll have to unlearn and relearn many topics afterwards.

[phpnewbie_newbie]

Thanks for the comments, that's helpful!

[ginerjm]

You are just starting out. Great. But - don't pick such a large complex project until you have reached the point that you know how to write PHP. Start small. Learn how to write code, write your own function, use proper techniques to perform queries, to log users in and to avoid hackers attempts to harm your site.

 

Pretty much everything one creates using php (and html and js with it) ends up as a dynamic website. What you are asking for is so much more than just a dynamic website.