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I have been learning web design/development for a while. I have basic knowledge of CSS(3),HTML,PHP,MySql(i). I also started exploring Drupal.
Now, I tried to use DRUPAL but it's not perfect. (Memory Expensive/Less Freedom). I am also not expert enough to tear down everything from Drupal and use things.
I then started to notepad and tried to create with every single HTML tag. It's not as exciting when you are not perfect.
I could combine Dreamweaver GUI and my own coding or free codes from external sources. I do not have access to DREAMWEAVER which is a great tool.
I have seen Expression Web but did not have time to explore.
Given my middle level of knowledge, and constraints, which path is best for me? (Continue with notepad(or basic html editors)/Try Expression Web/try to be happy DRUPAL/other solutions).
I want to make it dynamic with features like user registration/search feature/APIs/. I will include a lot of external codes. (This was one of the places I had difficult implementing in DRUPAL).
With the kind of things you want to do, you really need to bear down and learn how to do it in a text editor. While you don't need a mastery of PHP/JS/CSS (because of libraries and things like that), there really is no substitute for simply knowing how the back end works, especially if you're looking to create unique and dynamic webpages.
There's a free tool I used to use a while back called Komodo. It had some intellisense features for PHP/HTML.
Stay away from WYSIWYG editors at this stage - like the JNatalzia said, you should know how the back end works. There's nothing worse than trying to work with a developer who doesn't know basic HTML syntax and can't make a change that the WYSIWYG editor doesn't support (and believe me, they ALL have things you can't do without getting your hands dirty in code).
If you want to be a proficient web developer or designer, don't use any wysiwyg editor for HTML and CSS.
My suggestion to you is to work on the languages themselves, without any plugin at all, and ensure that you understand and know the basics of each of them. Use a simple text editor (NotePad++) until you feel comfortable with them, then you should move to frameworks and other tools.
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first of all, sorry for bad english. Please correct me if I write something wrong!
I'm a "noob" in the programing scene, so I need some help. I want to help my mom to automate a process at her bussines. The core thing I need to do are this:
I need to extract info from a webpage (it's an php webpage), and compare the products that arrive with the one's displayed in the webpage. I want to do that scanning the bar codes of the products (I've a database of all the products barcodes). Then I need to save the comparission in a file just to make sure that everything is ok. I want to know wich languague is better for my case. (Then I will try to do it, fail, learn from my mistakes and then have some "stable" program to do this)
TL;DR: I recive products, I check if everything arrived in a website. I want to do that using bar codes and "automate" the process. I want to know wich languague is better for my case.
Thank you!!
As others pointed out in the coments, there is not best language, you need to chose the one that fits you.
But let me give you some recommendations on what might work.
You said that the site is already in PHP, that's the backend language. You should keep using it since a part of the site is already built with it. Other options are JavaScript using NodeJS, Python, Java, Ruby.
You can do almost everything you need in the backend (server side) using PHP, but some things might be better to solve them in the client side (front end) using JavaScript, is the default language that runs on the browsers.
Usually you use the backend language to serve pages, interact with a database, send data to the client. And the front end (JavaScript) to add dynamic functionality to your website.
Web apps used to depend a lot on the backend, reloading the page for every action, sending a lot of information back and forth.
The modern aproach to build web apps (like yours) is a bit more dependant on JavaScript. You load the page once and then just do AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) requests to the server asking just for the information you need and showing it dynamicly with out reloading and having to load the HTML/CSS all over again. Many frameworks like Angular, React (with its whole ecosystem), help you a lot with it.
Read more about it here.
EDIT: just to clirify, I answered with some recommendations and opinions because it is what the question asks for.
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I am starting a new challenge. I am on my way to learn PHP since (I already have good knowledge in HTML CSS), i would like to have you advise in a good procedure of learning this.
To be specific my final goal is to be a very developer in PHP by the end of 2015 and able to work on project on my own and/or with team as freelancer.
I would like to hear from you guys a step by step learning programs which will conduct me to have confirmed knowledge in PHP OOP and Framework Symphony2. As i don't want to skip the stages i'd like your advise :
I have basic understanding of (loop, if/else, function).
I am looking some course (updated) and exercise to push up my level slowly but efficiency. A list of step would be a great start.
I'd suggest that you ensure that have a solid understanding of generic programming principles before you focus on a specific language. Knowing markup languages like HTML is relatively easy in comparison. When you get to programming, there's a lot more things to consider.
There's plenty of available free resources that should be able to help you.
http://www.tutorialspoint.com/computer_programming/
welcome to SO. There are lots of resources out there, some easier than others for a beginner. I would start on something like code academy and augment that with resources like php.net.
Then when youve covered those tutorials (I would do all the markup stuff like HTML as well) think of a personal project and build it. Its all very well reading manuals and doing tutorials, but you need a real live project to force you into finding solutions for real debugging issues. That cant really be taught.
Its worth noting that PHP isnt the only server side language out there, so keep an open mind and be ready to investigate other avenues as you find them.
Bear in mind to be able to hold your own in the industry is very different from being able to handle your personal projects ok. There are a lot more variables (no pun intended) in industry and the skillset you need to have is often wider.
Good luck with it.
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I've been playing around in the Web Development field for 2 years now and I am pretty proud when it comes to my progress as a programmer looking back at my humble beggining. This is not very relevant but I've wanted to back up my question with some background story. What it comes to my interest during a conversation with a friend was how to best structure your code when it comes to a website so it wil be very scalable for further modifications using an oop aproach. He suggested at the end of the discusion to use php classes to generate the html content. I personally use it like this only when the php helps me to retrieve something server-side related. I use HTML, CSS and JavaScript (in that order) as much as possible before calling in PHP. That's how it should work, in my opinion, especially when you have to work on a presentation website for example. What's intrigue me thinking about my friend proposal is that I structure my code that way using php clases to echo html content parts like header, menu, forms, slideshows, footer etc. will indeed scale my code way better and help my programming skills progress. I should end up with an index.php that returns objects of the respective classes creating that way the desired html content. This is how I image things working and I am asking you to help me reach a decision. I have some upcoming free time available and I want to invest it in becoming a better web developer.
It is generally a bad idea for all HTML to be generated this way.
In professional web development you often have front-end developers and designers whose only responsibility is the HTML/CSS/assets and/or JavaScript. The backend developers, (the ones writing PHP code), are usually responsible for the business logic of the application.
By having PHP generate HTML you are violating separation of concerns principles. Things will get messy. It's harder to scale up, and you will lose the benefits of being able to use a HTML editor.
Generating HTML serverside dynamically has uses in very specific circumstances. It can be done, but just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
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First of all to say that I'm new and I do not know many things about coding.
In recent days I have locally installed Wordpress and reviewed the options, but one thing worries me now.
Specifically, I want to open a website with a variety of articles, and I do not know whether to format text using shortcodes, or is it best to just do a visual editing.
I started with shortcodes in functions, but, it seems a bit too much for me as I am alone working on website.
Too many shortcodes somehow confuses me.
I do not know now whether to continue to create shortcodes, or to work with visual editor in plain html.
Please help me.
Thank you.
From experience short-codes are short-sighted. When you redesign or get rid of shortcodes all your old articles will show them and the designs will be broken.
I think shortcodes are a shortcut you don't want to take if your seriously trying to build content. In the long run they will hurt you.
But, if your just messing around with wordpress or causally blogging, short code away :).
I personally think best practice is to learn HTML, CSS and use that to build interesting content in your articles... Supporting legacy CSS is easier, if you know your creating very specific designs in your article then write the css in the article it-self using <style> tag.
That's my opinion at least.
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I'm thinking of making a little web tool for analyzing the search engine optimization and web accessiblity of a whole website.
First of all, this is just a private tool for now. Crawling a whole website takes up alot of resources and time. I've found out that wget is the best option for downloading the markup for a whole site.
I plan on using PHP/MySQL (maybe even CodeIgniter), but I'm not quite sure if that's the right way to do it. There's always someone who recommends Python, Ruby or Perl. I only know PHP and a little bit Rails.
I've also found a great HTML DOM parser class in PHP on SourceForge.
But, the thing is, I need some feedback on what I should and should not do. Everything from how I should make the crawl process to what I should be checking for in regards to SEO and WCAG.
So, what comes to your mind when you hear this?
Rather than 2 great tools out there,as RPM1984 said, there are literally hundreds of such tools which do stuff like checking alt, title, keywords and description and so on.
Since the tool you want to build is for personal use, I advise you look around several sites like seobook,seodoz. There are lot of such tools which provide various functions and most of them I am sure are free. Building a tool that is available out there free of charge is resembling to invest on wheel. Do not do that unless you are learning something.
Just For Your Information, usually there are several elements that I can check without pay money and easily:
MATA Property. Title, Keywords(this is something important), Description.
Semantic Structure. h tag, alt tag and so forth.
Link. Inbound links, their domain names, outbound links and things like that.
Presence On Significant sites like demoz.com as well as blog, twitter, facebook.
Domain Name of Your Site. Things like its register time is considered important.
If you want to know those info, then there are lot of free tools you can turn to.
Hope this helps and good luck.