Help starting to build a website

josac

I posted this same thread in the "Client Side" fourm, but I don't think that was the right place to post this question. So I'm not trying to bump or anything, I tried to delete the old thread but I dont believe I can do so. Sorry.

Ok so I have a decent amount of knowledge on PHP by now, so I want to use what I know in a real example and start building a website. But I have some questions.

First off I don't even know where to begin, should I make the layout first, the functions, what? Is there any specific order in building a website from scratch?

Which brings me to my next question, should I be using XHTML for the layout, text, etc of my site, and use PHP for the functions. Or can I build the whole site from PHP.

I have more questions but can't think of them now. I know these may be some lengthy answers but thank you for any input.

Alf_Bennett

Building a website from scratch...

You need to define clearly the purpose of the site. This is for your own sanity. If you have a clear vision of the purpose of your site, then you will have a better mental road-map of where the site needs to go. You may not even require PHP for your site, depending on what you are doing.

Some good rules of thumb going forward.
1.) Seperate Content From Design.
This is not even getting into php yet. this is purely the idea of having your HTML and CSS Set up so that your design is done primarily using CSS, and the structure/Content of the page is done in XHTML.
Though this is a lot of work to start with, it will help you in the long run.

2.) Seperate Data From Display
Kind of sounds like point 1... If you are going to have a data-driven, dynamic site, then you will likely be using PHP and a RDBMS. So in this case you want to have your "Backe-End" and your "Front-End" seperate. There are many easy to learn template engines out there. I use Smarty extensively, and though it is nearly its own language, it does help greatly to seperate the display from the data.
That way you are not generating HTML code in your PHP code, and there are no php calls (for the most part) in your HTML templates.

You are likely to get a ton of advice beyond this from others, but these are a couple of good ideas to guide yourself by.

josac

I am definetly going to take all that into consideration when I draw this out. Umm... with the design aspect, you suggest setting up the design first? Then do the "back end" work after that?

Also, I have very little knowledge on HTML and none what so ever with CSS. Should I learn these extensivley while setting up the design of my site, or will I just need to know basics?

Thank you

josac

Oh ya, my site will be pretty technical including usernames, passwords, profiles etc. Just to let you know

Alf_Bennett

josac;10968128 wrote:
I am definetly going to take all that into consideration when I draw this out. Umm... with the design aspect, you suggest setting up the design first? Then do the "back end" work after that?

This is really dependant on what you want, and how you are comfortable working.

For my Job, I actually do very little design work. My partner does that. I just write code and do just enough to give him an idea of how to build out the interface (the web desig stuff)

So for me, I am comfortable concentrating on the back-end first maybe using white pages for the interface, and then the interface is "Fleshed out" later.

Some people are more comfortable wire framing the interface first (build out the interface they way they want it to look without real back-end hooks) And then building in the back-end.

NogDog

I generally start thinking about the database end first, as if you get that correct from the start, the rest tends to go more easily. I might make some HTML/CSS page mock-ups early on for the client to see, mainly for confirmation that I'm creating what he wants and to help point out any "gotchas" we might need to worry about in terms of the user interface. But most of my effort goes into the back-end code (unless I'm doing something really fancy with JavaScript -- which I hate, so that usually goes slowly 😉 ).

Alf_Bennett

unless I'm doing something really fancy with JavaScript -- which I hate, so that usually goes slowly

HA! You have a kindred spirit here... I LOATH! writing javascript. It is an evil language created to beguile the PHP developer.

josac

Well thank you all for the input. I think I'm personally going to with making the back end first. One noob question I have though is, when making a page in its enitriety, does all of the back end info like arrays and stuff go above a DOC type line, similar to this.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

another thing, I know this question might be kind of hard to answer, but say I have a block of text, what kind of code would I use to place that block of text into a specific place on the layout. If the question is a pain to answer it's no biggie, I've just always wondered it.

Thank you

Alf_Bennett

<?php

$myText = "<h1>Hello World</h1><br />This is a block of html";
?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Untitled Document</title>
</head>

<body>
<?= $myText; ?>
</body>
</html>

dalecosp

josac;10968211 wrote:
Well thank you all for the input. I think I'm personally going to with making the back end first. One noob question I have though is, when making a page in its enitriety, does all of the back end info like arrays and stuff go above a DOC type line, similar to this.
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

The only things that absolutely have to go before your DOCTYPE declaration (or any other output) are calls like session_start() or setcookie(), and output buffering, if any of those is going to be used.

Good design, however, as practiced by most, is to do most, if not all, processing first, so, "yes" is probably the answer, with plenty of "quid pro quo" and "except in case of $foo".

If you grab the source code for some of the major free projects, like phpBB, phpMyAdmin, Joomla, WordPress, PhPNuke and so on, you'll see that they generally apply this rule, but there are some, perhaps several, exceptions.

Have you read any books on the subject, or are you just trying to get your feet wet with what you find on the 'Net? I'd recommend a little of both. And, possibly, doing a small project or two that aren't for public consumption, and using the Code Critique forum here or a similar forum elsewhere to seek experienced coders' opinions.

HTH,

NogDog

Generally, the "best" practice is to try as much as possible to separate the [X]HTML from the back-end processing code. One way is via the use of a template system (e.g. Smarty, among several 3rd party solutions), and another popular way is via the Model/View/Controller (MVC) paradigm via one of the many MVC frameworks out there. (And I suppose you could use a template system with a MVC framework if you wanted to.)

Among other things, such approaches make it much easier to change the HTML structure of the page without worrying about impacting the back-end code. At the very least, you can put the "boiler plate" portions of your pages into include files (either straight text or as function definitions) and call them within your main script, so that you do not have many lines of HTML, CSS, and/or Javascript "polluting" your PHP code.