Personal Webdesign...

[Tuffgong4]

when it comes to webdesign I know nothing but dreamweaver. If I'm just doing a personal website for jobs I may be seeking do I need to know anything special besides Dreamweaver, Photoshop and Ulead GIf Animator...anything that would be easy to learn that would ease my design. just wondering if you guys have any suggestions.

 

[NetRyder]

It all depends on the level of complexity you want your sites to have.

If a customer requires just static webpages, you should be fine with the software you're currently using. As a good coding practice, enable the "Make Pages XHTML compliant" in DreamweaverMX though. This would ensure that your site is cross-platform and cross-browser compatible, enabling you to reach out to a larger target audience.

If, however, you're interested in working with more complex sites involving dynamic content, you should learn a server-side language like PHP or ASP.NET.

 

[Tuffgong4]

I would really like to learn PHP for future reference but don't really know about going at it...book, website with tutorials...I have set up hosting with a company so I am using their servers and they allow just about everything run on it...so php would be really nice to learn

 

[thebear]

a book to learn PHP would be "PHP" By Visual (Visual is like the group of authors) and a site to learn PHP would be http://www.w3schools.com/

 

[Tuffgong4]

that w3schools might be the coolest web site I have ever seen

 

[Electronic Punk]

I got http://www.electronicpunk.com up and running on the 1st January and just kinda made it up as I went along

 

[NetRyder]

w3schools is definitely a great place to learn. Once you start getting familiar with the language, you can also use the online manual pages on www.php.net for reference. They come in really handy when you need to brush up on your syntax, or need to check what a particular function does.
Almost all of what I know of PHP came from my knowledge of other programming languages like C++ and Java, so I might not be the best person to tell you what books you should start with.

 

[X-Istence]

All my C++ and C programming experience came about as i wanted something more powerfull than PHP, eventhough i tried C++ before PHP, i didnt understand it, and it was hard, i learned PHP by reading tutorials, looking at code, looking up what functions do and writing my own test scripts.

Personally i have: PHP Advanced by Larry Ullman, i also have PHP Developers cookbook (Contains a lot of random scripts you can freely use), which is written by Sterling Hughes and Zeev Zuraski.

These books are awesome resources, and have provided me with lot of good tips and shown me a lot of examples.

 

[Geffy]

PHP Bible I have found quite useful (they include code which works in the 2nd edition as the ones in the first often didnt work)

I also learnt a lot from X-Istence, and Zend.com

 

[Tuffgong4]

awesome thanks guys