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[–]AWildWebDev 1 point2 points ago

Much like there a lot of programming languages there's a lot out there to develop for the web but it doesn't mean that for the basics they're not all pretty similar. PHP will do this job, as would Ruby. It could probably be done in javascript. Essentially it comes down to picking a language you want to use in the future, at least in my opinion. You may also want to see which you just seem to enjoy using more.

I'd probably look at Ruby on Rails or PHP for this myself. If you've never ventured into either, you've got a lot of learning to do before you could create something like this but with a programming background it shouldn't be too hard. There's plenty of information out there about both PHP and Ruby and the frameworks that go with them, so go crazy.

Whether you want to use a framework is up to you, there's been a lot of discussion about the pros and cons of frameworks on /r/webdev over the last week so have a look through some of that if you're wondering if you should be using one.

One final thing - avoid godaddy where you can. They don't have a particularly great reputation. Have a look at other hosts or consider managing your own server space with services like digitalocean.

Best of luck!

[–]pettycoatboat[S] 0 points1 point ago

Thanks for the response, really helpful. My only question would be: do I have to host my own server to run something like php? The windows and mac installation seem to say things like "choose your HTTP (web) server", when I just want to be hosted on an online server and run php scripts through it.

[–]AWildWebDev 1 point2 points ago

Not sure I understand so I'll give a quick overview of local and online servers. In order for others to view your sites, you'll need some server space and a domain name that points to it. As PHP is (probably) the most common server side language, it's usually shipped with the packages that web hosts offer. So if you hop over to hostgator, bluehost, etc and pay for the basic package you should see that it comes with PHP version X.X.X. Buy a domain, point it to your host (they'll usually have tutorials about how to do this) and you're set.

You can also work with PHP locally (this is how people develop sites BEFORE they push them live). To do this, the easiest way is to download either the MAMP (for Mac) or XAMP (for Windows) stacks. What this basically does is turns your computer into a temporary web server so that when you go to 'localhost' you'll see your script running. There are plenty of tutorials about getting this up and running. This is obviously only local to your machine, though, so others will not be able to use what you're working on.

If you have any questions feel free to PM me.

[–]pettycoatboat[S] 0 points1 point ago

Thankyou again. Very helpful. I've got php up and running and an SQL database going with access going between the two. Nothing makes sense but I'm sure it will all eventually fall into place!