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All right here's the situation,

I've been going hard out for a month or so now grasping the core concepts of HTML, CSS, and Javascript. I think I'm about ready to start creating a website that I plan on hosting.

The problem is that in my website I want to create a forum, but in order to do this I'd have to learn PHP and SQL (or so I think?). It feels as if my brain is already about to explode simply from learning and memorizing all of the HTML, CSS, and Javascript tags and/or concepts.

In your opinions what do you think I should do? I plan on just making the website now and getting some good practice in with what I've learned, and possibly adding in a forum later when I feel comfortable.

But if I choose to do it all at once, what would be the odds of me properly memorizing all of this? Are these languages hard to learn? Did you find it difficult to grasp these languages?

programming a forum from the ground up unless you have a reason to is pretty silly, if you just want a forum then use something like phpbb or fluxbb which is a simple install and you can modify it how you like.

Or some prefer punbb

Creating a full-featured forum from scratch might be productive and give you lots of experience. However, if you're just starting to learn other stuff it doesn't seem very feasible.

I vote for phpBB. Just because it's the one I've been using, I have no particular reason to defend it.

I found that the easiest way to learn programming, is by practice. Just start on the forum, and whenever you need something use php.net for reference. And eventually you will have the hang of it. A forum really isn't that difficult in PHP/MySQL

Try creating a basic site or something before a forum. Something like a file uploader or something. I dunno, something that will teach you things like user systems, good database structure and usage, stuff like that.

For now, I recommend just getting a forum system and learning how to deal with the installers. After you think you have at least a good grasp of PHP, try making a very basic forum system to integrate with another site. Just with categories, forums, threads, and replies. Throw in some BBCode if you want, maybe some smileys.

At 11/3/09 10:14 AM, citricsquid wrote: programming a forum from the ground up unless you have a reason to is pretty silly, if you just want a forum then use something like phpbb or fluxbb which is a simple install and you can modify it how you like.

I think the reason he wanted to make the forum was to learn the language...

I suggest buying a book and working through the examples until you grasp the concepts needed to make a simple forum.

Or look for a tutorial online. Make sure not to copy and paste code though, you dont learn that way.

At 11/5/09 04:31 PM, Relish wrote:
I suggest buying a book and working through the examples until you grasp the concepts needed to make a simple forum.

Or look for a tutorial online. Make sure not to copy and paste code though, you dont learn that way.

The Wise Relish has spoken

I learned VBScript and MSSQL by reading already existing code and plowing through dozens of tutorials. Learning by example and practice is the best way to go, although if I had to go back and do it again I would check out a good book from the library. Examples are especially helpful, by the way, for developing a simple and flexible database structure. Just don't learn something obsolete and completely useless like VBScript. :P (I say that knowing you're talking about PHP/MySQL but this is just a cautionary tale).