The recent controversy of the Steam workshop has served as a catalyst for my desire to finally bring development of my own blog to fruition. I have very sharp HTML/CSS skills, but admittedly I am not all that experienced in JS or PHP, however, in my light readings of W3Schools and other sources, neither should be particularly too hard to learn (or so a noob might say, I don't know). I already own the domain name and am pretty well decided on ASO (A Small Orange) for my web hosting. So my question is should I explore JS and PHP more first or dive straight in and learn as I go? Additionally, do you have any advice you think would helpful for someone whom has never operated a website before?
1) Always learn things before doing them. Yes, you can dive in. But this doesn't mean dive in in the middle, and "learn as you go" does not mean "learn as little as possible" in favor of copy+paste and bothering people on IRC.
2) Both JS and PHP are very, very easy to learn WRONG.* They are "expert beginner" languages. Both are very accessible, and because of that, there are vast amounts of resources available that are COMPLETELY HORRIBLE. Which brings us to the last bit of advice,
3) Don't use w3schools. It is an awful resource. In addition, they are not affiliated with the w3c in any way: they only leverage that misconception so they can get more money from naive beginners. Better places:
1) Fair point. Most languages that I use have all been self-taught by simply by experimentation as an occasional hobby.
2) I'm guessing that's why every once in a blue moon there are articles regarding security, always thought the culprit was the language (facepalming at my noobery).
3) Yes, indeed they are horrible in most subjects with largely uninteresting material, but they did provide at least a foundation until I sought other resources. Shame they are the first result from "learn html" on a google search, which is what most new "casual" devs will see... :/