Building a website from scratch.

[Legend]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to computer programming and web-design. I recently decided to teach myself C# programming, and then I decided to include learning how to code for websites. As I'm new to this whole thing I'm unsure about what I'd need to design a good website. I remember reading somewhere that I can use a programming language like C# instead of HTML to design websites. Now I'm unsure about what exactly to learn and in what order to go about it. Could someone explain to me what would I need to learn to build a decent website, and the software I would need? Also, would anything I learn from C# overlap with anything I need to learn to make a website? I would eventually like to build a site with the following features:

• Flash or Silverlight (Whichever's better) (From basic to advanced presentations)
• A database to store an inventory that is automatically updated according to the products I have at hand.
• An E-Commerce system
• The ability for visitors to search my site using a powerful algorithm, like the one offered by Google, that returns results on my site in a format I define.
• The ability for visitors to search for products by narrowing down by different categories such as price, features, design, etc.
• The ability for visitors to create an account with my website, and then allowing them access to pages created specifically for them
• Contact Form.
• Search engine optimized.
• The ability for customers to view 3D models of my products.
• Any other thing I might've missed that's needed for the kind of site I'm describing.

Any help on this matter would be appreciated. I am currently using Visual Web Developer Express and Visual C# 2008 express. Thanks!

Sincerely,
Legend.

[zachsformacs95]

HTML or XHTML is the standard language used for displaying content. It is not nearly as complicated as C#, so I think you will pick it up relatively quickly. Then, there's CSS for styling your HTML. CSS is also pretty simple once you get the hang of it. Those are the two basic languages for creating a basic website. After that, you can learn JavaScript to add dynamism to your site. JavaScript has many similarities to C, so it should be pretty simple as well.

(X)HTML is for displaying content.

CSS is for styling content.

Javascript is a scripting language and serves as a lightweight programming tool. Doing things like you described above (such as visitor accounts, contact forms, etc. ) would require JavaScript.

Codes like PHP and ASP are scripting languages that are executed on the server. Once again, doing things like you described above (such as visitor accounts, contact forms, etc. ) would require codes like these.

As for software, you would need a code editor (either something like NotePad or a WYSIWYG like FrontPage). You would also need a way to manage your files (usually an FTP client). There are many free solutions, or you can buy something like Adobe Dreamweaver.

Check out http://www.w3schools.com/

There are many other great sites out there as well.

[Legend]

Thank you for your help Zachsformacs95. Also, thanks for the link. Could you also clarify if I could use C# to add features to sites that other languages like the ones you listed above don't offer? Also, does HTML or CSS alow me to add silverlight or Flash content? Thanks for your time.

[zachsformacs95]

I'm not incredibly familiar with the programming side of web development, but I do believe you can use C# for web applications. I don't think it could replace something like JavaScript or PHP though. It definitely couldn't replace HTML or CSS.

As for flash content, you need the Adobe Flash program to create the flash content. In Adobe Flash you can create flash content by using it's WYSIWYG interface, and/or programming in Actionscript. From there, you can export it as a flash movie file and then insert that file via HTML. I'm not as familiar with Silverlight but I believe it works the same way. Websites with flash content can be nice, but I don't recommend creating an entire website in flash alone as this usually leads to bad SEO.

The link I provided above should have some information about flash as well as many other things you may want to look into such as various XML languages, databases, etc. Good luck!

[jgompert]

to build a website you have to know html, don't even worry about using C# on your sites until you have the basics down. If you are going to eventually use C# for your server side program I would go ahead and download yourself a copy of Visual Web Developer Express. It is by far the best program you can use for C# web development on Windows.

The best part about the program is that it provides DreamWeaver like functionality for static HTML, CSS, and JavaScript programing and gives you the added ability to use ASP.NET which is the language that you will use eventually to program with in C#.

However, like I said learn the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript before you start messing around with server side programming. Yes, C# and ASP.NET are great tools for adding almost any functionality that you can think of on a website, the output no matter what is going to be HTML on the browser, so you need to know what the Server Controls and C# code are doing, and yes with C# you will be able to get all of the functionality that you mentioned above.

[Lechlak]

Flash > Silverlight for now at least - try a Silverlight website - it is pretty slow moving.

[Legend]

Thank you all for your replies. I was wondering if I could use other technologies that I would like to learn to make my website. By other other technologies I mean things like C# (In addition to HTML and CSS) and 3D modeling and animation. In asking this my main concern is time and funds. I would like to build a decent enough website without investing a lot of time or money as I'd like to conserve both. Is there any way to do what I need by using software that is mainly WYSIWYG and yet offers a lot of features? I understand Visual Studio Web Developer, Web Expression, and Expression blend offer this to some extent. On the other hand, how much time do you think I would need to invest to learn the necessary skills (Like HTML, CSS, Java, flash etc.)? I would appreciate any help on this matter.

Sincerely,
Legend.