Resources
CSS, the Missing Manual David Sawyer McFarlandPHP and MySQL Larry Ulman
Manga Guide to Databases Shoko Azuma
useful programming resources
W3 Schools programming resources
Learning Ruby, an interactive Guide
An HTML validation tool, Very Important
Lists and CSS styles elegantly explained
Step by step lessons in PHP programming
Useful tools
Text Wrangler - General Purpose text editor
Transmit Text Edit and FTP client
The Total Validator validation tool
Building a cool website using HTML, PHP and MySQL
Getting Started
Most web tutorials gently ease you into the topic with simple programs that show you how to have the computer write "Hello World!" on the screen. An example:
I have other plans. I am not going to ease you into this. We are going to go out to the deepest posible water, and start there, and work our way to the shore. Things only get easier when you do things that way.
Most tutorials discuss things like SQL and security issues near the end, when you have already built up a habit of not thinking of those things much. For the purposes of this site, it is better to start with these issues first. Because as sure as the sun comes up tomorrow, some venial soul, a child of unmarried parents, will find your site and do something horrible to it that he couldn't have, if you had only thought about him first.
When doing any project it is best to build from a solid foundation. If you have nothing much in the way of a goal, and limited resources, you can throw together some cardboard, tar paper, some loose boards and have a structure that keeps you out of the rain. Building something like Versailles orShoenbrunn takes a bit more thought and planning. Of course, lots of websites look a bit like the Winchester House. But that is not where we want to go.
So the plan for the beginning here is to talk about databases and normalization first, then get into the world of MySQL, but stopping along the way to discuss basic security as we go along. After we build the foundation, then we can work on the rest of the structure, making sure all the while that the plumbing and wiring are up to code, so that the content you put into the page is secure and the user has a good experience.