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Basically, i've been 'web-designing' for 3 years now and have a preety good all-round knowledge of HTML. However, I want to begin learning some new web-design techniques such as ASP and PHP.
Problem is, i'm a complete beginner to this, and don't know where to start.
Firstly, i'd like to know in a basic sense what ASP and PHP are. And secondly, can anyone suggest a good starting point? If possible, i'd prefer online tutorials, but book suggestions are always welcome.
Thankyou to anyone who takes the time to respond, your help is much appreciated!
Problem is, i'm a complete beginner to this, and don't know where to start.
Firstly, i'd like to know in a basic sense what ASP and PHP are. And secondly, can anyone suggest a good starting point? If possible, i'd prefer online tutorials, but book suggestions are always welcome.
Thankyou to anyone who takes the time to respond, your help is much appreciated!
cjh, see the other post about PWS and follow my instructions.
Yes, ASP is free to run locally (apache has a module available) but on the Internet the chances of you finding a free or even cheap server that runs ASP are slim to none.
Yes, ASP is free to run locally (apache has a module available) but on the Internet the chances of you finding a free or even cheap server that runs ASP are slim to none.
ASP is also "free" in the sense that you don't have to pay for it, but you need really to run it on a Microsoft server, it can run on a Unix machine but you would need expensive 3rd party add-ons to run it. If you have Windows 95 / 98 / 2000 / XP you can start using ASP right now! You can use the in-built Personal Web Server to test and run any ASP that you write.
The basics of ASP are quite easy to pick up. You can place ASP code in the middle of HTML code, link to databases and stuff like that. For some good examples go to http://www.asp101.com. If you want to learn from scratch, you may be better learning .Net which is the next version of ASP, and looks even easier still to use.
Don't be fooled by the "PHP is better 'cos it aint Microsoft" thing. I'm sure PHP is good, and fast, but there are more "plain language" ASP resources around, and I personally found it easier to learn ASP rather than PHP - I have a PHP book which I barely started because I couldn't get my head around it.
The basics of ASP are quite easy to pick up. You can place ASP code in the middle of HTML code, link to databases and stuff like that. For some good examples go to http://www.asp101.com. If you want to learn from scratch, you may be better learning .Net which is the next version of ASP, and looks even easier still to use.
Don't be fooled by the "PHP is better 'cos it aint Microsoft" thing. I'm sure PHP is good, and fast, but there are more "plain language" ASP resources around, and I personally found it easier to learn ASP rather than PHP - I have a PHP book which I barely started because I couldn't get my head around it.
I've never looked into ASP, but am going through PHP pretty nicely. But from what I've heard and read, PHP and ASP are pretty similer, except that PHP is a free Scripting Language where as ASP is a Microsoft thing.
I think it's a good step for you to move to PHP first rather than ASP, as PHP is supported on Freeola, whereas ASP is not.
There are probably some good online tutorals out there, which the others on here could probably tell you, but I started out with a book called "Samms Teach Yourself PHP4 in 24 Hours" which has helped me along nicely, the only downer of that book is there are some mistakes in it, but going through it I picked up on these mistakes and was able to correct them, so I think this bok is pretty good :o)
At the moment I'm trying to get PHP to work on my 'poter to test scripts off-line, but not going to well, lol.
But there are some good books in Librarys these days (from what I've seen) so maybe check there first, as my book was £17.99 and why pay then when you can get it for free for a few weeks
Hope that helps, but I do recommend PHP over ASP as a starting point :o)
I think it's a good step for you to move to PHP first rather than ASP, as PHP is supported on Freeola, whereas ASP is not.
There are probably some good online tutorals out there, which the others on here could probably tell you, but I started out with a book called "Samms Teach Yourself PHP4 in 24 Hours" which has helped me along nicely, the only downer of that book is there are some mistakes in it, but going through it I picked up on these mistakes and was able to correct them, so I think this bok is pretty good :o)
At the moment I'm trying to get PHP to work on my 'poter to test scripts off-line, but not going to well, lol.
But there are some good books in Librarys these days (from what I've seen) so maybe check there first, as my book was £17.99 and why pay then when you can get it for free for a few weeks
Hope that helps, but I do recommend PHP over ASP as a starting point :o)
Basically, i've been 'web-designing' for 3 years now and have a preety good all-round knowledge of HTML. However, I want to begin learning some new web-design techniques such as ASP and PHP.
Problem is, i'm a complete beginner to this, and don't know where to start.
Firstly, i'd like to know in a basic sense what ASP and PHP are. And secondly, can anyone suggest a good starting point? If possible, i'd prefer online tutorials, but book suggestions are always welcome.
Thankyou to anyone who takes the time to respond, your help is much appreciated!
Problem is, i'm a complete beginner to this, and don't know where to start.
Firstly, i'd like to know in a basic sense what ASP and PHP are. And secondly, can anyone suggest a good starting point? If possible, i'd prefer online tutorials, but book suggestions are always welcome.
Thankyou to anyone who takes the time to respond, your help is much appreciated!