starting 1st project - tips for newbie?

[dex3703]

Hi,

I'm going to be building my first PHP/MySQL website. It's for a class but I would like to keep it afterwards as a demo. My idea is to build an alumni site for my high school, with forums.

I just wanted to ask if there were any caveats, pitfalls, or problems I should watch out for. Is there some mistake you made that you wish you'd known about before? Just looking for any advice anybody can offer.

Thanks,
Derek

[trex005]

Well, it is very difficult to pinpoint general issues. (specific questions are MUCH ezer to address) It has always been what I didn't know that I didn't know that was my problem. I look back at my early projects and am disgusted at the hackerish way I went about everything. I could do something that took me months before in days if not hours now that I have learned soooooooooooooo much.
One general thing that I have learned is, that coding style drives efficiency. Make sure you develop a good system to make very EZ to read self documenting code... Anyone can slap together something that works, but it makes life 10X ezer when you can go back 9 months after you complete a project and improve it or reuse pieces from it