Fate of Io: Website management project

Website management project

2004/08/16 16:44:40 PDT by Davy boy2000b [0/13]

I have been studying hard these past monthes with JavaScript and VB6.

Although I am still pretty novice (damn PlayStation distration) I really want to have a crack at coding a website system that I can sell onto clients.

Brief
* Target web area is centered on publishing articles / stories.
* Database driven website to store the articles
* Admin can log into thier 'Admin' section and change settings such as how long an article is shown as being 'new', what articles to loop on the 'featured' or 'recommended' list on homepage for example.
[ This one above can be done by using an array to loop but I want the admin to be able to change the actual articles within the array being looped and how often it is changed. ]
* Admin can input text directly into the webpage to be shown in select places such as the home page's 'News' section.

I understand these kind of things can be changed easily but onyl if you know a little bit about the language they are wired with. I want this product to be as user friendly as possible.

This was an idea I had suddenyl on way home on train earlier on today and it hasn't had much thought as you could probably tell...

But I guess my point of this topic is to ask the guys that know ( *cough* TEMP ) what languages I will need to use and to waht level?

Thanks for your time and please suggest more features if you like. Also feel free to critisize, enquire and offer additional help with this project if you can offer it!

Thanks again.

2004/08/17 03:36:17 PDT by Temporal [manager]

You will need to know SQL to interact with the database, plus any one of many server-side scripting languages. Your best bet would probably be to learn PHP for that, though Java (servlets) or Python could also work well. Other common choices are Perl and Visual Basic (ASP), but I strongly recommend against either of those. Both are very poorly designed languages, and VB in particular will lock you into Microsoft platforms (very bad).

As for what "level"... This wouldn't be a trivial project. However, the best way to learn how to program and how to design large-scale software systems is to come up with a project and try it. So, go ahead and try it. But, be warned, it will take some time and you may find yourself starting over every now and then as you discover better ways to do things.

2004/08/17 11:02:25 PDT by Davy boy2000b [0/13]

How comes everybody says it will take some time - I'm well aware of this!

It's gonna take me not monthes but years I can see it >_<

I found this out when I thought to myself "I'll quickly code myself a little vb6 alarm prog" that asks me to put in an alarm time so that when the time comes, a web control will open that default connects to a streaming radio URL. Blimey it took me about a fortnight before I finally gave up in the final stages. Mainly because when the time actually came nothing happened!

So oh so knowledgable Temp...assuming now I'll be using PHP/MySQL whats the lowdown on this project:
* How long will it roughly take when I haven't done any PHP before but know HTML and a bit of vb6?

I want some honest opinions here if this bugger is gonna take up a large amount of my time.

The reason why I wanna do this is like this:
This may sound a bit like phpNuke but it will be a more than this. Granted it is pretty damn cool asis but I want to get a few tests underway and the main functions in place and a test site setup so that I can offer the system as an IT solution to clients. They give me a spec and I'll customize the 'engine' for thier specific needs and voila...some more education moneys. :D

2004/08/17 11:33:17 PDT by 3Der [0/7]

Well SQL dosent take very long to learn, you could pretty much get it down in a few days.

2004/08/17 13:49:41 PDT by mystik3eb [0/43]

It's interesting how you're irritable that people keep telling you how long it's gonna take...then you ask how much time it's gonna take. Make up your bloody mind, Davy o_O

This stuff does sound interesting...I just wish everything was as easy to learn as HTML.

2004/08/17 15:50:10 PDT by Temporal [manager]

Estimating how long it would take is really hard. I could probably produce something like what you want in 1-2 weeks, if I were focused on it, but that's me. If you aren't "fluent" in programming (doesn't matter what language) it will take a lot longer. Again, I really have no idea how long; it depends on your exact skill level, how quickly you learn, how much time you have to work on it, how many features you want to add, etc. A good rule of thumb for programming projects is that they will take twice as long as you expect, even if you take this rule into account.

I want to emphasize here that SQL *is* its own programming language which you will have to learn if you want to interact with any SQL database. It's not as hard to learn as most, granted, since you usually only write one line in it at a time, but it's not trivial.