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What are the most common templates, languages, web-design tools that you recommend for me to be able to start web-design? I do software but I have not not had web-design experience, I have been a Win32 developer with VB 6.0, Delphi, C#,etc.., not web-based. The type of web-design I have in mind is some simple web-sites, even static web sites, that the owner of some small business like a restaurant wants to have a web-site to show its services ..I know there are some stuff people start with like WordPress, Joomla, PHP CMSes, CSS frameworks,... I am looking for stuff like this that helps speeds up building a nice website...what are the things people mostly use these days?

Thanks

Blake
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  • What specifically do you want to build and what problem(s) are you trying to solve? There are a lot of web development languages, tools, libraries, and frameworks out there, and different problems will have different optimal solutions. – Thomas Owens Sep 06 '11 at 15:05
  • Are you looking for this: http://langpop.com/? – S.Lott Sep 06 '11 at 15:10
  • @Thomas: something like this, simple, "http://easyecycle.com/" .. If I can build something like that even one of them per month for one client, it pays for Gas and electricity bills! right? I work full time, so something small for part time work at home – Blake Sep 06 '11 at 15:14
  • @BDotA There is no one-size-fits-all solution that's good for everything. Without specific requirements (functional and non-functional), it's not possible to say that language X and framework Y will be your answer for building something for every client. – Thomas Owens Sep 06 '11 at 15:18

3 Answers3

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Twitter Bootstrap

Twitter's open source boilerplate template that's actually presentable and good enough for even some production apps. Check it out and use it to get a HUGE head start on your design, and is well-documented enough that you can quickly build on it.

I'm using this for my current startup and it's cut dev time literally in half (plus, I'm not a very good designer).

Ryan Hayes
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I would break your question into two categories:

1) Web Design: Are you a designer? I have found the design aspect of creating graphically interesting websites a challenge when doing full-stack development. There are a lot of pieces if you are creating a non-trivial web design (color, fonts, graphics, etc.)

Since it sounds like you are more of a coder, consider frameworks that have themes like WordPress or Drupal. You can purchase well-designed custom themes from many place. Since your goal is to design a specific type of static site you may save a lot of headache by going this route.

2) If you are looking for ways to get started in web development then again there are frameworks and a lot of great beginning books on using them. I favor Ruby on Rails and The Rails Tutorial or Agile Web Development with Rails are two great titles that take you from start to finish. There are also many books on Zend, CakePHP, etc. which do the same thing. Give them a try if that's your interest.

Jim Munro
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I would recommend you to write LISP. There are many Frameworks out there for LISP, see this StackOverflow question for reference. As you can see here, with LISP you have many advantages.

P.S: I would use PHP but you get too much downvotes for just mentioning it in a positive way. BUT you get free Webspaces with PHP everywhere, Joomla, Wordpress etc. are written in PHP (even Facebook started with PHP). There are some good Frameworks for rapid development like Cake-PHP, too. Also PHP is a very simple language wich is easy to learn.

Community
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Tokk
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  • hmm, LISP...How about Ruby? and Ruby on Rails, etc? – Blake Sep 06 '11 at 15:08
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    You would have accepted my answer if I had't mentioned PHP :-P – Tokk Sep 06 '11 at 15:31
  • LOL! I am not a good designer that can desing beautiful Button,s Grids or not much CSS and jQuery KNowledge but still need their look and feel in a web page that I design, so I accepted the other anwer to this question, his framework already has those stuff. Thanks :) – Blake Sep 06 '11 at 15:37
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    I have to assume that you are recommending LISP sarcastically. I program in LISP, but it possesses one of the most unconventional syntaxes I have ever encountered. As a computer scientist, I have great appreciation for it, but for web design and development, I can't think of a worse choice. – Byrne Reese Sep 07 '11 at 00:09