So the title says it all. I want to do this pretty much all by myself, and possibly host it myself while I'm working on it. What programming languages do I need to learn? And with that are there some guides I can consult? I do know basic HTML so I think that will help some. Also, are there templates I can start from? Thanks for helping if you do!
Hmm, so it all really comes down to what kind of website you're going to be making. If its anything with any form of storage/uploading/downloading I highly recommend learning PHP (its godlike). For general website creation I had to learn PHP JavaScript HTML5 CSS3 and a few odds and ends of other forms of JavaScript (JQuery & JSON) (also XML). But for a basic website you really only have to know HTML5 + CSS3. If you want to do anything seriously function PHP and or JavaScript is gonig to be needed. An awesome place to start is http://www.w3schools.com/
HTML and CSS will give you a simple site. Look up some tutorials on making a site from a psd and cutting it up into html css that is pretty simple... Setting up wamp on your computer to see how it will look in your browser on a server.
Once thats all good to go you can buy a domain from ( i recommend ) namecheap.com for all normal domains extensions, if you need anything crazy you can grab those and gandi.net
You can also pickup a shared host from ( i recommend again ) madgenius.com if you want to learn more sysadmin server setup stuff I would recommend getting a vps either from buyvm.net or finding something relatively inexpensive from lowendbox.com
and thats pretty much the timeline of how i learned haha.
Thanks for the tip! But basically it will be formatted similarly to this site, with a forum and main page with articles etc. but the focus will be mainly on gaming.
Thanks for the tips as well Ferman! I can already tell this is going to be a slow process for me lol.
Creating a more complex website like this one is best done using a content management system (CMS). A CMS is basically a framework that takes care of all the heavy lifting when it comes to managing the data on your site. That includes database and file management, user profiles, forums, etc. Think of it as a house, with the frame built and all the electricity and plumbing installed. You can take it from there and make it look however you like and do whatever you want.
TekSyndicate was built using a CMS called Drupal, but Joomla and Wordpress are popular too. Drupal is the best (imo), but also has a pretty big learning curve. All of them are coded in php. There are other CMSs out there implemented in different languages, but I'm not real familiar with them. Php is definitely the most ubiquitous though.
To really be competent with a cms, you will need to learn html/css/javascript in addition to php. Once you are familiar with those technologes you can really create some pretty amazing sites. It can be daunting at first, but it's rewarding as hell and there are toooons of resources for free all around the web. If you're really serious, I can't recommend lynda.com enough. It costs money (not much), but they have amazing video tutorials for basically any software technology, including html, css, javscript, php and many CMSs. I find it worth every penny and more.
Thanks man, I may have some of my friends help me with this as well. I don't really have too much freetime right now becuase of school but this is something I will definitely start this summer. Again thanks for the suggestions!
After you learn the basics of JavaScript I'd suggest you to take a look at CoffeeScript. It's a simple language that compiles to JavaScript.
Honestly, it may be better just to start with wordpress and looking up the individual changes in CSS and HTML that you want to make on google. There are just so many user friendly guides for wordpress out there already and it will get a more functional website as a result.
But you may want to take a short youtube tutorial on css and html first.
anyone care to elaborate exactly what you do after writing a simple html website, for noobs? You host it how?
I never saw this in action and would really like to know what the steps are!
If the website is html/css/js only you can use any http server you want (apache, nginx, ...). If there is server-side code your server needs to support the language. Apache for example supports php, perl and other languages over cgi.
So, what you do is install a http server (apache), maybe a server-side language (php), maybe a databse (mysql) and just put all your data to the right locations.
Or you just use a hoster and then push your data over ssh/ftp to the server.
You'll find more information on the documentation of all projects or on the website of the hoster.
I can really recomend codecademy.com if you like to learn some basic HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery.
The tutorials at http://www.tizag.com/ are excellent. Codeacademy is also an option, but I prefer working in my own environment.
I agree with Bizznatch, you won't have to worry about coding. There are some things you will have to watch for security wise while setting it up but, once you are setup, you can choose a theme and get to creating content.