PHP,  ASP, ASP.net, HTML, JavaScript ?????? Which should I know & where is the best place to learn?

You should be able to modify some simple source code and to do that it would bee beneficial to either have a reference book or know which web sites you can visit to get the answers.

While you can make a complete web site without having to know a single line of code if you want to be able to add some extra functionality (like add a Google map or like our newsletter sign up).  Both would require being able to use some very simple HTML code as they both use an IFrame to load the information into a page.

That being said where should you start?


Probably HTML would be the best place to start as you will not need to learn as much of it when you use an editor.  To start learning HTML you can get a great reference book like the one featured here.

I used the previous version when I first started out and found the Visual Quickstart Guide one of the best and easiest reference books available.  This by far is a very important addition to your arsenal. Especially now that it contains full CSS and XHTML support.  For more information on this book please click here

After learning a little bit about HTML it would be a good idea to familiarize yourself with JavaScript and how to modify simple scripts to get them to function for you and your web site needs.

A couple of examples where JavaScript is commonly used in in Form verification (Ever submit a form and forget a required field?) or using it to hide your email address from SPAM bots.

I never really found a book as useful for me on JavaScript as I did a web site that contains tons of scripts and tutorials on how to use JavaScript.  While there is a JavaScript and Ajax for the Web, Sixth Edition: Visual QuickStart Guide I find it just as easy to use http://javascript.internet.com/

At this point you have more than enough to create user engaging web sites (The HTML for formatting how the page looks, the JavaScript for adding functionality to your page).

However to get the most out of a web site you should learn or get a working understanding of a programming language, there are many including a whole handful that haven't even been mentioned here.  However some of the very basic are:

PHP (Personal Home Pages) - Runs on all servers (both Linux and Windows). This is the first one I had learned as the software is free and the Linux servers were quite a bit cheaper at the time.  

While it was not very difficult to learn and the server works great we do not hand code into PHP anymore.  However originally learning the code language has helped over the years to tweak scripts that I could easily download for free.

ASP (Active Server Pages) - Mostly runs on a Windows Internet Information Server (IIS), however some companies have made some ASP applications and software that will let you run some of this programs on a Linux server. (Generally with a lot of effort and it still is not the same as using a windows machine.  

When we started working with ASP it was a better alternative than PHP and was mostly used for Enterprise level companies. With ASP we were able to make database driven web sites and Internet applications.  This was a great language for many years, while a working knowledge of it would be helpful in working on some older scripts ASP is no longer the Microsoft recommended.

.NET (Asp.net) - So where does that leave us as we move into 2009 and beyond? Well the one language I would learn ASP.net.  It is the latest dynamic language released by Microsoft for creating interactive web sites.

The .NET Framework is Microsoft's comprehensive and consistent programming model for building applications that have visually stunning user experiences, seamless and secure communication, and the ability to model a range of business processes.

Microsoft has released many FREE tools for using this software.