web design

May 28, 2007 7:44 PM

I'm looking to learn about xml, sql, web design and programming in visual studio by making sample websites. Where can I do this.

I want to just create say 10 different sites that all have different features so I can learn how html, xml, sql servers vbscript and all that stuff work together.

posted by amsterdam63 to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

How much do you already know? Do you already know SQL? HTML? You'll want to use VB.net rather then vbscript.
posted by delmoi at 8:05 PM on May 28, 2007

Find a local community college that has classes in web basics, and take a course in that.
posted by mathowie at 9:16 PM on May 28, 2007

Some free videos available at learnvisualstudio.net.
posted by IronLizard at 9:26 PM on May 28, 2007

Take an existing PHP script and modify it to do something new. This way you learn the idioms of the language as well as proper organization, structure, layering, abstraction, etc. I really think you're not going to get far if you just sit down and write something from scratch, because you'll be reinventing a lot of wheels, poorly. Also, consider a book for learning SQL, that is one topic you really will do yourself a disservice by learning half-ass by trial and error. And, avoid the stupid Visual Studio IDE crap. A plain text editor should be where everyone starts.
posted by Rhomboid at 10:02 PM on May 28, 2007

by where, do you mean in physical-reality, or like an online tutorial/forum/web-form? Because you COULD put it all together on your computer and run each document and make the links to the other documents and make a little website without the web. Or you could get a silly little account at, like, Google Pages or old-school Angelfire/Geocities.
posted by crayolarabbit at 10:19 PM on May 28, 2007

Response by poster: I'm going to get an actual website and play around with how to learn more about all the things I mentioned. I know vb.net, but I just want to put it together with the web.
posted by amsterdam63 at 12:20 AM on May 29, 2007

http://www.w3schools.com is your friend. They have tutorials on pretty much every web technology you can think of. They dont go into too much depth but they're great for getting started.

You can run everything locally off your own computer. If you're going the opensource route then you need Apache & mySQL, if you'jre going MS then you should be able to run your own web server if you've got XP (might only be in XP pro) and you can download a copy of VB Express that comes with a basic copy of SQL server.
posted by missmagenta at 12:44 AM on May 29, 2007

Damn Preview!

vb.net isnt a web technology in itself, you'd have to look into asp.net which you can code in VB.net - there are very very few free .net hosts and I dont know of any that do asp.net + sql server for free. The license costs are huge so its expensive to give away for free.
posted by missmagenta at 12:46 AM on May 29, 2007

Do not learning scripting as you go on a publicly accessible website. Unless you already know safe scripting practices (and you don't -- you're haven't learned the basics yet), your site will be a prime target for exploitation.

Use the public server to learn how to build a static website (Or just build the static wbsite on your own computer). Meanwhile, set up a development environment on a local computer (the one you're working on, a second computer in the bedroom, or a similar arrangement), and work your way through tutorials. Then upload those to a live site.
posted by ardgedee at 5:01 AM on May 29, 2007