Hi,
I'm primarily a domino programmer on windows in my day job, but want to learn about programming web sites on linux by night!

I have many reasons to prefer a linux to a windows hosting service. Being a newbie, the best thing I like about linux is that it's cheaper.

I'm looking for at least one good resource on the best way that I can learn about how to build a web site hosted by linux. (Books or web sites) When I build a site, I don't like wysiwyg. I prefer to type my html and css in notepad. Things like accessibility, ease of use and good programming practices are important to me. I don't trust wysiwyg software to do it right. I've thought about using the already built solutions that my web service is offering me so that I can do something as simple as submitting a web form into my e-mail. But what I really want is to write it myself, even though I know plenty of people have already done it, I won't understand what I'm really doing unless I actually do it myself!

Php and mysql are terms that I see thrown around a lot and at a basic level I understand what they are, but what exact combinations technologies should I be using to have a dynamic web site? Here's are some of the things I want to do: access control, hide/when functionality, the aforementioned e-mailing a submitted web form to myself, web front end databases and customizing content to a particular user.

I should mention that right now I only have a windows machine. Do I need to build a linux machine to do this right?
Thank you,
HeatherB

miss heather,

php and mysql are definately what you want to look into. php can be picked up pretty quickly and sql is simple. as far as tutorials on php, just search google, you will find hundreds..

>Do I need to build a linux machine to do this right?
of course not. but it might make the process a little easier, you could develop and test on your local box and then upload it to the server that is hosting your site. but if you do not want to mess with installing linux and just want to get coding, php works on windows as well, so does mysql and apache(the webserver in the equation). so you could develop on a windows box, you may or may not run into problems when you upload it to your host.

also for linux hosting, godaddy.com has some very nice packages. you get a ton of stuff included for an excellent price.

IMHO PHP and MySQL are like the Access of open source. It can get the job done but it's sort of an ugly hack. Most of my web development so far has been done in PHP, but if I can avoid it I won't use it any more for projects of decent size.

I would probably use mod_python if I were starting a new web app now. Of course lots of people rave about Ruby on Rails. Haven't tried that one myself.

It would definitely be a good idea to build a Linux box, yes. Most of the open source web technologies can work on Windows, but it's a good idea to play with the real deployment platform as much as possible.

> IMHO PHP and MySQL are like the Access of open source.

why?

Thank you! This helps me out a lot.
-miss heather....

Of course, if you have enough diskspace (or buy a cheap HDD), you can dual boot your home system.
There's lots of guides for this here (LQ).
Just make sure you have good backups before you do it. Can't be too careful.
Everybody has their own preferred lang; you might want to look at a few before picking one.
Perl had a big history for building dynamic websites; see module CGI.pm, has Apache mod_perl & lots of support (http://www.perlmonks.com/ & search.cpan.org for loads of downloadable modules).
Like PHP (& Apache/mysql etc etc), usually comes free as part of std Linux install.
If you are going to write code from scratch on Linux as you indicated, prob a good idea to at least learn the basics of vi/vim editor, even if you later prefer another one.

www.phpfreaks.com

I'm surprised no one mentioned HTML or CSS...they are the core of websites.

i think OP did