what are the programming techniques to make website nice...?

[dylanbutler]

I want to get tips from all you guys...

1. if you code a website with PHP and database, what backend database do you use most? why?
2. what are the techniques to minimize the size of website?
3. what programming techniques do you practice to make your coding system is easy to trace and understand?

I want to know about this to make my programming learning faster...actually, I am a PHP newbie....

[NateDesmond]

I do not know the answers to your questions about php, but, if you are trying to learn PHP, I would highly recommend W3School's PHP Tutorial. I have used their HTML Tutorial with great success.

[cw1865]

Originally Posted by dylanbutler

I want to get tips from all you guys...

1. if you code a website with PHP and database, what backend database do you use most? why?
2. what are the techniques to minimize the size of website?
3. what programming techniques do you practice to make your coding system is easy to trace and understand?

I want to know about this to make my programming learning faster...actually, I am a PHP newbie....

You're a manufacturer of equipment for sewers and drains and it looks nice enough to sell fine crystal....seriously, it looks good. The only recommendation I would make is that your category listings appear to be an image and those are some great keywords, so perhaps text might be more appropriate so that the bots read it....

btw your title tag has (powered by cubecart) in it, get rid of that reference.

[Peter (IMC)]

Originally Posted by dylanbutler

I want to get tips from all you guys...

1. if you code a website with PHP and database, what backend database do you use most? why?
2. what are the techniques to minimize the size of website?
3. what programming techniques do you practice to make your coding system is easy to trace and understand?

I want to know about this to make my programming learning faster...actually, I am a PHP newbie....

PHP is not the limiting factor. It's not about how you program, but what you program. What you program is not limited by your programming skills. When needed you'll learn what to do. The creativity of what to program is the limiting factor.

I have found that it is really difficult to find these 2 factors in the same person. You can't be a great programmer and a great creative mind that makes up what to program. You could be each of those individually, but not at the same time.

In case you have no choice but to be both, make sure you show to lots of people what you´re building and use all the feedback you can get to improve what you´re programming. That is actually a lot of fun. My programming skills in php are at the level of being able to put stuff in a database, to take stuff out of a database, to update something in the database, and to delete something in a database. With these basic skills I am able to build complete sales management and implementation management systems. But I depend completely on the feedback I get from the users. Without that information, I can't build anything useful.

[bj]

The fastest way to get up to speed with php is to join one of the open source php projects that intrigues you, start building mods/add-ons/plugins and start getting feedback from the community, and the other devs. Eventually, if your add ons have merit, you'll most likely be given opportunity to work on the program itself. That is really one of the fastest ways to gain quick competence with web stuff. Find a good project, with a good team, and get on it.

If you like blogs and blogging, you might want to check out the Habari project.

[langsor]

Wow, this is a big topic...

To take a stab at your questions, in order:

1. I have always used MySQL since it's readily available on almost all servers as well as easy enough to install on my local machine for testing purposes. Either that or store limited amounts of data in xml or plain text files -- as a flat-file db approach. PHP has many built-in functions to handle both of these approaches.

2. There are four things I can think of off the top of my head to minimize the size of your site.
(a) Reuse site-wide graphics on all pages, so the browser can cache the images and only have to load them once.
(b) Call any JavaScript routines that you use on more than one page from an external file, instead of repeating it on every page. <script type="text/javascript" src="path/to/js/file.js"></script>
(c) Call any CSS declarations you use on more than one page from an external file, instead of repeating it on every page. <style type="text/css" href="path/to/css/file.css" media="all" /> And; Use CSS instead of html attribute tags whenever possible, such as replacing html color and font attributes with site-wide style declarations.
(d) Include common page elements with php 'include' directives for all pages across the site. This might not make each individual page smaller, but will make updating common elements much easier (as will the use of CSS as mentioned above). These includes might be a header, banner, or footer with copyright notice, and footer menu that doesn't change appearance with what page you're on.

3. This is a personal preference type thing. So personally I tend to organize site resources into sub-directories -- following a system I've developed through trial and error over time. But remember, when editing the site in the future, you will be digging around trying to remember where you put everything, so make the nomenclature of your directories intuitive and try not to create too many levels as this can get frustrating when making updates.
Example:

public_html/

public_html/include/
public_html/include/img/
public_html/include/js/
public_html/include/css/
public_html/include/php/

public_html/content/
public_html/content/img/
public_html/content/pdf/
public_html/content/temp/
public_html/content/...etc/

You can organize your site pages into directories too, if you don't want to keep them in the root directory, or if there are so many of them that it gets confusing to sort through...but remember that you are reusing resources like images, style-sheets and JavaScript files, so make the different directories have the same relative path to these resources and things will go more smoothly as you go.

3. cont... PHP has many built-in functions and functionality. Learn them, familiarize yourself with the docs on the live php.net site -- since these contain user contributed notes which are invaluable, and download the docs to your local computer for quick reference on functions you know but just need a quick reminder for.

3. cont... Find programmers who have been doing it for a long time and study their code. This will give you a sense of what clean code tastes (looks and feels) like when you're writing your own. There are, unfortunately, more readily available examples of junky code when you do quick Google searches -- than good.

I could prattle on for a long time on each of these topics and still barely scratch the surface. So here are just a few available resource that you might look into as well.

Buy books on the subjects you need to learn. Find ones that are easy for you to read and are not too dense with information but have lucid examples. I suggest these two publishers but you may find others work better for you.
O'Reilly :: O'Reilly Media | Spreading the knowledge of innovators
SitePoint :: SitePoint : New Articles, Fresh Thinking for Web Developers and Designers

JavaScript resource websites:
How To Create
JavaScript Kit- Your comprehensive JavaScript, DHTML, CSS, and Ajax stop
QuirksMode - for all your browser quirks

Style Sheet (CSS) resource websites:
css Zen Garden: The Beauty in CSS Design (experience what can be done)
SitePoint CSS Reference
How To Create
QuirksMode - for all your browser quirks

PHP resource websites:
PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor (use the function or site-wide search)
Google (when all else fails)

I'm sorry if this reply tries to be too specific, but each of these topics are a slippery slope and after 10 years as a developer working in custom graphics, flash, actionscript, javascript, perl, php, (x)html, ajax, mysql, and others technologies and approaches -- it's challenging for me to keep my good intentions short. If you need to contact me with other specific questions, I will try to answer you as best I can and as time allows. designATsatarahDOTcom

[Easywebdev]

1. Databases, Mysql for the reasons Langsor stated, readily available on most hosting platforms. If I need to integrate a database into the program I use sqlite.

2. Its all about reusablility, small tiling images as backgrounds to the page, nav buttons etc, single stylesheet, and including headers/footers sitewide where one change in a menu is reflected across all pages.

3. Subversion/cvs - you should really learn versioning systems. The ability to backtrack changes and snapshotting codebases at various stages of development will save you a lot of headaches in the future.

Php documentor, learn it, use it, love it.

as for php programming techniques, learn OO php, pick up a good book on design patterns. Stick to the kiss and yagni principles. (keep it simple stupid - You arent going to need it).

Use a good editor, go download eclipse with the pdt project.

[jScott_Harris]

I guess I learn different than most. I drive head first in a new project and end up spending time fixing my mistakes and its those mistakes that I learn new ways to program. I truly learn best by fixing what I break. As far as graphic design, I learn by observation. I keep an eye on trends and try to replicate things from scratch. I subscribe to Graphic Design USA, which is free btw, so I would highly recommend signing up.

I recently had to intergrate an Asterisk PBX system with a php based website and in the process I messed up the Asterisk configuration, so I fixed what I broke and then still had to get the script up and running. Now I feel pretty confident using Asterisk. Asterisk is now one of my new favorite toys.