New at Website designing

[mertbas]

Hi! I'm a bit new to website designing. I'd like to work with joomla (and maybe others i don't know anything about yet) and I need good tutorials with how-to's and examples, etc. Anyone has anything on your mind, please say it.
I'd also like to create a members-only website. Anyone to help me out?
Also, how can I create a completely SSL-secure website with joomla? or is it even possible? What would you recommend?
So, I'm mainly looking for tutorials. It doesn't have to be a video tutorial, because I can also understand it from the text. Three main requests:
-Tutorials to learn and master website design (not just joomla)
-Members-only websites
-completely secure websites

 

[cybrax]

Joomla.. I've heard of it.. sort of.. but seriously..

Joomla and the various other CMS or content management systems are a good way for many to start. It's modular elements can be swapped in or out and all you have to do is add content as they say. But they will not do everthing, not by a long chalk.

'Learning Website Design' - looking at other peoples work is how most start. The web is full of ready made templates and javascript code snippets that can be 'cut & pasted' together to form quite a reasonable web site.

Members Only - password protection / access control. This can be done at a very basic level with javascript but is easily defeated and so you'll need to hit the books and learn a Server Side Lanaguage such as PHP, along with Msql for databases

Totally Secure - Hmm kinda upscale for a novice. What did you have in mind?

 

[muza007]

There are lot of resources on internet which would teach you web designing and help you also in programming. Just type a keyword in Google search and all resources in front of you...

Good luck!

 

[walidno1]

learn php, mysql and javascript........as for securing, u can deal with that once u learn these languages!!

 

[mertbas]

guys, i know i can search google, or i should learn programming languages. I need ideas. when you google it, there are also a lot of useless things and things hard for starters.

 

[farscapeone]

-Tutorials to learn and master website design (not just joomla)

You should go to a collage if you want to "master" web design. Becoming a pro by learning from the Internet is too hard (believe me I know).

-Members-only websites

Joomla and almost all other CMSs have that functionality out of the box.

-completely secure websites

First of all that's not possible and second, you'll need to learn a lot PHP (or Java) if you want to even start working on security.

And to be a little constructive instead of just lecturing you
http://tutsplus.com/

 

[mertbas]

thanks leviathron, you're the most (and only one) helpful so far.
maybe i wasn't so clear what i exactly wanted: I want book names! Books you or a friend of yours read and liked, books you can recommend to a starter. there are tons of books out there and some are not so good for a starter. if you can also name some books about php and java, I'd be glad.

 

[walidno1]

I recommend going to lynda.com....if ur worried abt the payment, download a few videos from torrents and stuff (we aren;t allowed to discuss how to get them) and if u like the way they teach (basics) then BUY A MEMBERSHIP....thats a start...then u can move to books (usually I find books too boring!!)....Leviathon knows a lot of books abt programming. I think he will give u names

@Leviathon: bro, I started learning php and man it takes time.......DANG!! Shudn't have thought it wud be piece of cake

 

[essellar]

It's awfully difficult for any of us to get more specific unless you can get more specific in describing what you want to do. There are a few things I can say for starters, though. Like "forget you ever heard of Java for now". The learning curve is too steep, making the distance between "Hello, world" and a working web site too far for a self-described n00b. You can do wonderful things indeed with Java, but not without investing a lot of time, trouble and effort in learning both the language and the APIs for at least one host platform. It's not a forgiving environment, you need to build an application before testing (rather than just code-and-test), and major changes can require server environment restarts. Not fun.

PHP has the advantage of being simple to get started with. You can install a server stack locally (try WAMP Server if you're on Windows), and start playing right away. Book? Try starting with Head First PHP & MySQL -- it doesn't go very far, but it's a better kick-start than most. When you're ready, the Wrox Professional titles are a good bet. But keep in mind that books are pretty much obsolete when they're published; the best resources are on the web. The problem is finding the good ones. Hint: keep an eye for Misson's postings in the Programming Help forum; they're full of good links. Click them.

SSL security is handled by the server and the HTTPS protocol. Achieving that is no biggie codewise. Application security has almost nothing to do with SSL -- all that does is keep people from sniffing packets on the network -- it's about managing authentication and permissions/roles within the app. That's a big topic all by itself, and for every opinion there's at least one security forum website with at least a thousand flame wars going on. There is no "completely secure". There is only "better than the minimum you need". If the minimum you need is "completely secure", then you'll have to give up the idea of a web site -- in fact, you'll have to give up the idea of a community of users who share any information in any way, since they're all potential leaks. The best you can hope for with a web site is to make it really annoyingly difficult for a malicious user to break in (you'll hear things like "rainbow table", "salt", "nonce", "hash", "pbkdf2" and "three strikes"). It's the best anyone can do, but it's not perfect. It can't be.

 

[mertbas]

thank you essellar

 

[farscapeone]

For beginners there's an excellent and easy to understand book from Vikram Vaswani (yes he is a bit ugly but he writes a bang good books )
http://www.mhprofessional.com/product.php?isbn=0071466541

From there you should be able to do many things with PHP and MySQL.

You should also have a chm version of PHP manual, believe me it's necessary! You can download an official version from here.

There's one more book you should have laying around when you are working in PHP. It's a book that covers it all and if you ever have a question about something PHP related, this book will most probably have the answer. It's not required to read it form beginning to the end but when you need something you can't find anywhere else you can find it in this book.
http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0764557467,descCd-tableOfContents.html

 

[dakota.jones8845]

W3schools is a good place to learn coding

 

[misson]

W3Schools is outdated, inaccurate and incomplete, and it's not just my opinion.

 

[farscapeone]

W3Schools is outdated, inaccurate and incomplete, and it's not just my opinion.

Yes, but it is still useful sometimes, especially for beginners.

 

[misson]

Yes, but it is still useful sometimes, especially for beginners.

Perhaps as a reference, but primary sources (W3.org, php.net, dev.mysql.com &c.) are better. As for W3Schools tutorials, they result in too many bad habits; anyone using them will have to unlearn what they pick up. There are plenty of better, free resources out there. These days, there's no reason to settle for W3Schools.

• How To Create
• Semantics, HTML, XHTML, and Structure
• HTML Dog
• Dev.Opera
• Mozilla Developer Network
• PHP tutorial that is security-, accuracy- and maintainability-conscious?
• net tuts+
• Writing MySQL Scripts with PHP and PDO
• "Introduction to Databases and Relational Data Model" by Maurer and Scherbakov
• 20 Websites To Help You Learn and Master CSS
• HUGE collection of web development links

Not that the above are all perfect, but they're at least generally better than W3Schools.

 

[grapikstation18]

you can use joomla or drupal on creating a website and also for the membership type of website, you need to learn more PHP and MySQL

 

[walidno1]

or u can use photoshop tutorials....PHOTOSHOP IS AMAZING!!