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A Beginner to Coding?

.Joe.

Yours Truly
NLC
Does anyone the most efficient site/place to learn how to code website templates, forum skins, etc. stuff like that?

Any help will be appreciated.
 
References are the best start to learning it on your own (In My Opinion):

http://www.mysql.org (Use their search to look up a specific thing, IE: search for CREATE TABLE.)

http://www.php.net/manual/en/indexes.php (Function Index)

http://www.w3schools.com/ (For other stuff like HTML, CSS and JS.)

=====================

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASP.NET - ASP.NET Article

http://www.postgresql.org/ - PostgreSQL Website

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Database - Oracle DB

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TxtSQL - Txt SQL (Might be needed for MyUPB.)

=====================

Your question is vauge, because there aren't just PHP Message Board softwares (IE: Snitz Forum), and not all forum softwares use MySQL.

You also may have been talking about creating stuff for a remote host (like invisionfree), if that's the case, none of this should help; and you're better off going to the invisionfree support forums.
 
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Thank you Iyeru,

Sorry if my question was vague, I'm looking to learn how to code templates (web designs), but right now like only simple HTML and CSS, and creating tables, etc.

Any places I can learn how to do that?
 
Thank you Iyeru,

Sorry if my question was vague, I'm looking to learn how to code templates (web designs), but right now like only simple HTML and CSS, and creating tables, etc.

Any places I can learn how to do that?

This is what I want to learn to do.
 
This is what I want to learn to do.

Like jonny said, it depends on the forum.

For example, if you have IPB 1.3 or earlier, you may need to know some PHP to change certain parts of the templates. (2.0 caches, soooo... if you have that you need to turn of cache'ing and have IPB get template data direct from the files, to change stuff you can't change via the ACP templating system. Don't know if it can do that though, phpBB3 has a setting to do that.)
 
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HTML for your basic website templates, which I linked above.
Like Iyeru said, if want to do some advanced forum templates it's good to have some good knowledge of PHP and Javascript.
 
if your using a script with a templating engine, none. You'll need to get familier with the scripts syntax, but the documentation on its site should cover this. It's good to know javascript - I suggest using mootools http://mootools.net/ so you can avoid having to do heaps of complex coding.

Getting proficient in css is a must. I've always gone to sites like cssbeauty.com and just read the articles - you pick stuff up through osmosis.
 
What I did, was to rip templates or grab free ones, then take them apart and test them here and there to see which code does what :p

Experiential learning ftw :p
 
Also learning how the Smarty template engine works is good too. I know WoltLab BB3 uses the smarty template engine, almost all scripts these days do, but you still need to learn the var's for all different scripts, like {@RELATIVE_WBB_DIR} in WoltLab is the path to the icon folder, whereas another script could have {@PATH_TO_ICON} etc.

edit: also, I agree with Tizag, also using http://www.learnphpfree.com is good too.
 
What language will I need to know if I wanted to design/create my own script? Something like a control panel, or a billing system?
 
What language will I need to know if I wanted to design/create my own script? Something like a control panel, or a billing system?

PHP.

But dont be suprised if it takes you 6-9 months of learning before you are able to even consider starting a project as big as a billing system :p
 
Oh, no don't worry. I expect even longer. Well I just started learning PHP, and I just made a log-in form, just a simple PHP log-in form. So it has no sessions or cookies. I honestly just started learning PHP today, the code I created is:

Code:
<html>
<head />
<body>

<form action="index.php"method=POST>
Username: <input type=text name=user><br />
Password: <input type=password name=pass><br />

<input type=submit value="OK!"><p>
</form>

<?php

$user=$_POST('user');
$pass=$_POST('pass');

if (($user==".Joe. && ($pass=="MyPass")) echo "Access Granted"
else echo "Access Denied!";

?>

</body>
</html>

Do you think I'm on the right track on progressing through and learning PHP? :)

I'm getting a pretty good understanding on variables, 'if' and 'else' statements, and echo's, etc. I already had a good understand of HTML.

Can anyone explain 'GET' and 'POST' statements a bit more to me?
 
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$_GET is an array of all data passed through the URL. eg:

mydomain.com?var1=hello&var2=world

if in the page you put print_r (print everything in an array) you would get this:

array(
[var1] => hello
[var2] => world
)

the array all this data is held in is $_GET

for $_POST it works the same way, except the variables are passed when a user submits a form.

<form name='form' action='post.php' method='post'>
<input type='text' name='Name'>
</form>

when submitted to post.php you could access the data put into the "Name" input like so: $_POST['Name']

neat eh?

Remember, when dealing with user input you MUST clean it first:

so:

$username = addslashes(striptags($_POST['username']));

for example.

You talked earlier about creating a control panel. You'll need to be doing incredibly advanced stuff for that.
 
Okay, I'm trying to make a more serious log-in/authentication script but I'm going to have to use mySQL. I don't have alot of knowledge in this. I've made my database in mySQL, called Login, now I have to make a table also called login...now I made a table with 3 fields but I can't seem to figure out how to make the 1st field's 'type' an ID type? Anyone know what I'm talking about? And for the 2nd, and 3rd fields I want to make them user and pass types.
 
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