Re: New at Website designing
It's awfully difficult for any of us to get more specific unless you can get more specific in describing what you want to do. There are a few things I can say for starters, though. Like "forget you ever heard of Java for now". The learning curve is too steep, making the distance between "Hello, world" and a working web site too far for a self-described n00b. You can do wonderful things indeed with Java, but not without investing a lot of time, trouble and effort in learning both the language and the APIs for at least one host platform. It's not a forgiving environment, you need to build an application before testing (rather than just code-and-test), and major changes can require server environment restarts. Not fun.
PHP has the advantage of being simple to get started with. You can install a server stack locally (try WAMP Server if you're on Windows), and start playing right away. Book? Try starting with Head First PHP & MySQL -- it doesn't go very far, but it's a better kick-start than most. When you're ready, the Wrox Professional titles are a good bet. But keep in mind that books are pretty much obsolete when they're published; the best resources are on the web. The problem is finding the good ones. Hint: keep an eye for Misson's postings in the Programming Help forum; they're full of good links. Click them.
SSL security is handled by the server and the HTTPS protocol. Achieving that is no biggie codewise. Application security has almost nothing to do with SSL -- all that does is keep people from sniffing packets on the network -- it's about managing authentication and permissions/roles within the app. That's a big topic all by itself, and for every opinion there's at least one security forum website with at least a thousand flame wars going on. There is no "completely secure". There is only "better than the minimum you need". If the minimum you need is "completely secure", then you'll have to give up the idea of a web site -- in fact, you'll have to give up the idea of a community of users who share any information in any way, since they're all potential leaks. The best you can hope for with a web site is to make it really annoyingly difficult for a malicious user to break in (you'll hear things like "rainbow table", "salt", "nonce", "hash", "pbkdf2" and "three strikes"). It's the best anyone can do, but it's not perfect. It can't be.
Last edited by essellar; 07-21-2010 at 09:33 AM.
Reason: Removed dupe content (due to timeout)
“Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.” --Donald Knuth
"It was as if its architects were given a perfectly good hammer and gleefully replied, 'neat! With this hammer, we can build a tool that can pound in nails.'" -- Alex Papadimoulis (on TheDailyWTF.com)
LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by mertbas
