Im not long started my microsoft software development course, 98-361 it focuses a lot on C#.

I want to mess about with building a website, what i want i don't really know yet.
I want to be able to fully customize the site just so i can play around with diff types of codes etc. I am right at the bottom rung even below on on this type of stuff but i have free time to do it and i like being able to see an end product from what im doing.
A couple friends in the past have asked me to create websites for them and i have said no cos its not what i do. But i now would like to try.


what site is the best to use? i saw on here a few times people mentioning one dot com is that the one to use? i will build it through trial and error and learn as i go a long what i can and can't do etc
Will i be able to use html java c# c++ ??? just so i can see what each one does etc

any info appreciated thanks

Checkout Odin project.

Also I've hear Mozilla has some pretty great resources for Web development but I've never used them.

So, every website is going to involve HTML and CSS. And modern web development is greatly aided by knowing javascript. So, no matter what other language you use, you will have to know those.

Plenty of good websites are developed with not much else.

Regarding other languages to use for the "backed", you can literally use any language. Almost every major language has been used for web development. I've used C++, perl, tcl, python, ruby, PHP and even bash.

It's not... "easy"... but Apache is a webserver that is capable of working with all of these in one way or another. There are probably other similar webservers that will work also.

That's not... necessarily the best approach though. Sometimes it makes more sense, imo, to pick a language, and pick a webserver that is ideally suited for it. When I wrote a lot of Tcl, that was AOLServer. If you're doing python then you can start with one of the systems like pyramid, django or flask, which are usually capable of being their own webservers, with an upgrade path to a higher performance server like apache or nginx.

Really, I would say this
1. the important thing is to get started. Do not wait until you are "ready", do not wait until you have picked the "ideal tools"
2. with that in mind, understand that you will be replacing and throwing away almost everything you write in the beginning. This is fine. I have abandoned sooooo much code in my lifetime.
3. understand everything you're doing. Avoid stuff that hand-holds you too much through the process. You need to know what's going on.
4. this means: learn the HTTP protocol! It is completely uncomplicated but you will do so much better if you know how it works.

Good luck!

Good advice right there. Follow it

thanks for the feedback/info much appreciated

i am downloading dreamweaver at the moment too.

i will check back in when i choose one hopefully i choose a good one
i just want to be able to fiddle with different things as i go along , as the course im doing is C# and dont see many options out there for that and most dont seem to use/need it (if thats the correct term to use)


once again im really really new to programming./coding so thanks for the input

I would start off with front-end stuff (the things you can actually see) and just use dummy data to play around with.

Once you get a good grasp on that, learn how to connect that to the backend (server + db). If you focus on JS, the MEAN stack is something good to gain a proficiency in. You will learn one of the most in-demand frontend frameworks right now - angularjs. MEAN stands for Mongodb (database), ExpressJS, AngularJS(front-end data-binding framework), NodeJS.

hi yea def the front end stuff i want to focus on for now

is there any particular server i should go for ?

I would look around to see where you would want to host your website. That will determine what your options are.

If you're using c#, why not go the asp.net route with visual studio? There's a free community edition of vs that should let you play around and see what you can do.

Check out this book if you want to stick to c#:

http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-ASP-.../dp/111884677X

VS lets you drag and drop a fair amount of stuff and easily change visuals on your site so that you can see what code is generated and then learn how to extract that code into, say, an external css document.

i didnt know that, i have VS 2015 that im using for my course.


just checked my emails and i signed up to codeacademy a while ago and a email today after their upgrade "build a website using HTML5 CSS"

four hour course i will have a go it then i might have more info on what way to go

thanks again

You should avoid using ASP.NET MVC because it's old technology. Learning it is wasted time in my opinion. ASP.NET Web API is a good idea though. In other words using .NET to retrieve and send data to the client is good, but using it to help render your HTML is bad.

Where you want to start is definitely HTML/CSS. Then probably use something simple like jQuery to make calls to a C# backend via ASP.NET Web API. After that use a more sophisticated intermediary like AngularJS.

Also absolutely do not learn any ASP.NET below version 5.