So i recently purchased a domain and would like to begin creating a website, but i have relatively little experience with this


I would like to build a social networking site similar in design to Pinterest and Tumblr, where users can post external URLs and also interact with other users


Im not sure what to do now after i have purchased my domain.. do i need to purchase webhosting? Or something with php / mysql ? Or something completely different?


Ideally i would like to begin the basic site design myself and then later hire a professional programmer/developer to complete the site once i have rendered more detailed blueprints

Any information or suggestions on what steps i should take would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

Web development is not easy and will probably take at least several months to learn. If you don't know how to program, it will take longer. Here are 2 online courses on dynamic web development though.

https://www.cs75.net
https://www.udacity.com/course/cs253

Also, I don't think it will be easier for a professional programmer to come in midway and build on / clean up your noob code rather than just start from scratch himself.

ah k thanks, ya i dont expect this to be up and running for a while, but i really do want to launch it at some point and i plan on putting a lot of work into it

i was just curious what the proper steps were to going about it, what i need to purchase etc, or like, if i wanted to start out super small and just mess around with little cost to me while figuring it out, and then upgrade everything later once i have a stronger user base and/or heavier traffic?


i will def check out those links, thank you

I wouldn't buy anything until you have something to launch. Even then, you can get a basic website up online for free using the free tier of services like Heroku/Google App Engine/Openshift. It will only cost you money once the site gets bigger, has more traffic, requires more resources, etc.

First steps are get good with HTML + CSS. It's all aesthetic stuff, but if you nail that everything else will be a lot easier afterwards.

HTML and CSS are certainly parts of the equation, but I don't think the other parts become any easier afterwards. In fact I think HTML and CSS are the easiest parts. Everything else is harder conceptually.

^ya, not so much looking for "how to" build a website (coding etc), moreso looking for how to go about setting one up (web hosting etc), if that makes sense

Worrying about hosting is literally like the last step though. It doesn't make sense to buy hosting, then spend months learning and building your site while the hosting you bought sits there and does nothing.

That said, there are several ways to deploy and host a website.

1. Use your home computer as a web server. You should never do this for any sort of production site, but there is no reason you can't host a website on your own computer. In fact, this is probably what you will do while you're developing/testing. Your computer won't always be on though so this won't work for production.

2. Rent servers in a data center. I think you would only do this if you need physical access to the servers. There is a high amount of work involved if you manage your own machines. You have to install software, maintain hardware, configure everything, etc.

3. Go with some managed hosting service like Amazon Web Services. You don't get physical access to the servers but you still have to install software and configure the servers. It's still a lot of sys admin work, but some people like this because they like having control over exactly what software and configuration is running on their servers.

4. Platform as a Service. Heroku, Google App Engine, Openshift, DotCloud, Amazon Elastic Beanstalk are just a few of these services. There is basically zero sys admin work. You set up a handful of config files, run one command to upload your code, and your site is on the internet. They take care of scaling, so if your site becomes big, you don't even have to think about adding more servers, they just do everything for you. If your site becomes big, this option is probably more expensive than the others though and you don't have full control of your servers.

But seriously, none of this matters until you have a site to launch.

You also forgot shared and VPS hosting. You can basically copy/paste the files you need into an FTP server. There's no admin or scary command line work at all.

But yeah, get the site up and running locally first. If you have a business name, go to a name host like namecheap and make sure the URL is available. If it is and you are dead-set on the name, buy it for the $10 / year or whatever, but don't buy a hosting plan just yet.

thanks, i appreciate your responses, i have a lot of work and learning to do to get this up and running.. but ya that makes a lot more sense to develop the site on my own computer before i put it online

Send me a pm if you need some help. I'm not an expert but I have created a few sites.

Yeah I'd say worry about HTML and CSS last. Learn how to build a solid backend and just output unformatted text to the frontend for now.

Agree with others that hosting is last step in this process. Build site, get everything working exactly how you want, then deploy it to hosting platform.

I don't know, I disagree. HTML + CSS is a great starting point, once you understand the DOM fully learning client side scripting such as Javascript is a lot easier and intuitive.

Good design is about progressive enhancement, and I think the same might be true of learning web development. Start with the basics and build upon that gradually as you become competent at each level. HTML/CSS > JS > Server side languages

HTML/CSS is also a great place to start because you get usable visual results very quickly which can make the learning process more fun. It's also a useful skill.

I agree with Freakin. If you study HTML first, it's hard to come to the realization that websites are not just static HTML files. You say "start with the basics" but I think the basics are understanding what happens when you load a webpage.

In both of those online courses I linked above, the very first things they teach are http, GET, POST, and how information passes from client to server and vice versa. I think these things are crucially important to understand before you try to make things look pretty.

I've transitioned from scripting to dev (c#) in the last 18 months or so, and one of the big problems for me was trying to get a usable frontend too quickly. In hindsight I would have been better off starting my first project as an API then building the frontend later.

I think Gullanian makes really good points. It's one thing to think that the entire web is a bunch of static pages then learn that you can write 15 lines of HTML via functions to create 10,000 LOC of HTML. It's a different ballgame to try to run and create those functions without a deep understanding of the output then attempt to connect that output to something that can be used with the rest of the technology stack. HTML is the unifying glue and I think it is the first thing to learn and master, especially when said mastery takes about one week.

The way I started out was learning basic HTML first then straight into a web language (PHP) and I thought that transition was quite good. The reason is that a server language is near useless if you can't even create a bare basic form to input stuff into to test. I don't agree with doing the whole html -> css -> js -> whatever -> server language as that will take forever and client side languages don't conceptually prepare you in the slightest for server languages. Also it is much easier tweaking css than it is tweaking a large sites architecture so you can slowly iteratively improve the look + feel as the site grows, you can't as easily iteratively modify the fundamental design.

As for web hosting, just throw another hand up here for last thing you should be thinking about. Hosting will be driven by your site design choices - what language, db, usage etc. You don't choose the hosting then base your dev work around what you have chosen.

Good HTML + CSS is not just about making things look pretty.

Well, my personal advice would be to do it in the following order.

1. Learn enough HTML to build a bare bones webpage with an input form. Don't worry about CSS at all.
2. Learn a server side language and understand what makes webpages dynamic.
3. Add whatever HTML and CSS knowledge you need as you go along and realize that you want things to look a certain way.
4. Learn some JS when you realize you want to do some things client side.

+1 to all this.

I think the reason I wouldn't advise a complete noob to master HTML and CSS at first is because that will not give you an accurate idea of what web development is. A noob should be exposed to what web development actually is as soon as possible so he can decide if he can/wants to do it.

Start with a programming language first. I'd recommend Ruby or Python. HTML and CSS are just details attached to a delivery mechanism (the web).

You learn a ton of important things from starting out with HTML. Starting at server-side programming is a disaster waiting to happen. Learn enough CSS so that a framework makes sense, forget javascript for the time being, learn basic SQL, then work on connecting the database -> HTML pathways (programming language).

Who said anything about server-side programming?