My Web Development Roadmap

Having completed my Head First HTML book a couple of weeks ago, I started having a play around with some HTML and building a little test site. At the same time I began to sketch out some ideas for the kind of websites that I would ultimately like to build. I have several ideas and most of them have several features in common:

• They'll be database driven in some way
• Most will require a secure login system
• I'll want a nice Ajax front end

I already have a book on Ajax and its after starting that book that I realised I would need to take a step back and brush up on my HTML and learn a little Javascript too. So my initial plan was to study HTML, then Javascript and then move onto Ajax.

However, after pondering my above list I realised that all of my sites needed to be dynamic. They would all need to be database driven but I could cope without Ajax to start with. So this has changed things a bit. As much as I've like to play with the cool features of Ajax, I am more concerned with getting something functional up and running quickly so I had to find out a little about database driven websites.

After a little digging there seemed to be two popular paths that stood out - the Php / MySql one, and the ASP.NET / Sql Server one. They seemed to be biased towards *nix / Windows respectively though in the case of Php / MySql they can also be run on Windows servers. I don't know any of those technologies though I am a C# developer by day so I'm pretty sure that ASP.NET is going to be easier for me to pick up than Php. For that reason alone I went for that route.

I've now bought the Wrox book Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 with C# and I'm working my way through it. I'm feeling a little frustrated at the moment as I realise that I can't really do much yet - it's all just study. Hopefully I'll get to a point where it will all start to click and I can really get moving on something.

I'm such a w00b!

A what?? A w00b! Ok so I play a lot of computer games and a 'newbie', somebody who is new to the game is often referred to in a derogatory fashion as a n00b in 'dude speak'. I happen to quite like calling people n00bs in the nicest possible way you understand! :)

And what does this have to do with software? Yesterday I finished my introductory book on HTML & CSS so my new mission is to just get started building a website. I flicked through the book and pulled out the main teaching points and built a list of 29 things to do with the site to exercise all of my new skills. Step 1 was to simply create a page with a header, title, headings, paragraphs and an image. Pretty basic stuff and of course there is no styling yet so it looks horrid.

I'm working through my list of 29 things and I'm up to number 4 - making lists whoooo! I thought to myself "I feel like a complete web n00b" and that just led me naturally to the word w00b! So, just in case nobody has thought of it before, YOU READ IT HERE FIRST!

I'm a w00b yay!

Oh dear, back to the HTML...