Dynamic Site Coding and Programming Newbies

[Andy]

If you find HTML easy you should look at coding some scripts to run on your site. It's great fun and makes your site much more powerful to retain visitors.

For example, you can have signup forms and capture visitor details and get the details emailed direct to your email box, process form data, automatically generate site content from feeds and databases etc.

I tend to use http://www.php.net and mysql but a recent development may be of interest to newbies to dynamic sites: http://www.rubyonrails.org/

[Queen Bee]

This looks really interesting.

I love the text on the front page: "Ruby on Rails is an open-source web framework that's optimized for programmer happiness and sustainable productivity. It let's you write beautiful code by favoring convention over configuration."

Have you experimented with it yet?

[Andy]

I installed it and it didn't seem to work. But later on I realised it was my Norton Firewall blocking the server on my local computer. So it should work now but I haven't had a chance to try it. However I am very happy with php and mysql myself but maybe Rubyonrails is easier for people new to programming? When I get around to trying it I'll post my findings. The installation gives you an Apache web server including PHP and MySql on your windows PC so it is usefull for these too. You then just copy your web pages into the www directory to simulate a web site. The index page is http://localhost:80/ (so port 80 must be open in your firewall).

After you have written a few simple scripts you get more and more adventurous and can cut and paste code you wrote before.

[Queen Bee]

maybe Rubyonrails is easier for people new to programming?

This is the way it appears to me. I think I might find more use out of it, seeing as how I have very little knowledge in this area, and the program looks like it would be a nice start.

When I get around to trying it I'll post my findings.

I look forward to it!

After you have written a few simple scripts you get more and more adventurous and can cut and paste code you wrote before.

This also appeals to me. In the future (When I have more time on my hands), I think I'm going to try out this program for a few of my own personal projects. Who knows, I might actually start using it for more client projects and reel in the extra $$ that way.

[Andy]

I did some more investigation of Ruby on Rails.

I thought it would be ideal for newbies to programming but now I would recommend starting with PHP They have a simple tutorial at http://www.php.net

Ruby looks like a great way to build your own database applications. So it's probably geared more towards professional programmers. One nice feature is that you can run it in different modes such as development mode to make it easy to debug. Also, many web hosts may not support it as standard.

Here is a tutorial: http://instantrails.rubyforge.org/tutorial/index.html - I recommend using phpmyadmin to set up your database though since it's free and a standard feature of many web hosting platforms.

[Andy]

I found a company that specializes in Ruby on Rails with links to their creations.

Seems like they produced some very nice applications:

http://www.bigbold.com/ - the example sites all have big page ranks with simple fluid designs.