New Website

[cmmc420]

Im working on a new site and want to dabble into some new things but dont know where to begin. heres what i want to learn...

Member Sign Up: So i can have members on my site. free sign up just so i can like choose random names for free giveaways and maybe let them leave comments if there a member.

A custom rating bar that fills when you mouse over. kinda like itunes but not star shape in the shape of a leaf ;) any help will be greatly appreciated!

[sunils]

You can have a field in database to recognize those members.

[freecrm]

Im working on a new site and want to dabble into some new things but dont know where to begin. heres what i want to learn...

Member Sign Up: So i can have members on my site. free sign up just so i can like choose random names for free giveaways and maybe let them leave comments if there a member.

A custom rating bar that fills when you mouse over. kinda like itunes but not star shape in the shape of a leaf ;) any help will be greatly appreciated!

If you've got a free member area, you need to learn about back end databases and front end interfaces.

I use MySQL (Back end) and php server-side scripting for interface (which is all free and open-source).

My site does much of what you are talking about so you might want to have a nosey and see what you like/don't like.

If you like a particular part, you know its possible and I (as well as loads of other people here) can help you get further - but you need to be more specific otherwise your repsonse will not be great!!

As for your rating system, that will come a bit later I suspect and will probably be some form of JS (although I suck at JS!)

[Zenax]

The rating system could work with flash and action scripting together. Perhaps you could design something in flash, have it working like you want it too, then use the actionscripting to store whatever the user has clicked on in a database.

As for the members area, there are plenty of websites that offer tutorials in the relevant subjects in which you need to learn in order to create a backend and frontend system.

Most of them just show you how to create the forms and the code behind them which is all you really need to know.

From past experience the websites with the tutorials, all tend to follow the same paths, such as first creating the database and then the forms to connect to the database.

[bachstrad]

Read AND USE the book in easy steps PHP 5 by Mike McGrath.
I promote this book only becuse in UK it is £10 so cheap compared to others so you dont have to sepnd a lot to learn a lot. In conjunction with this I also I use Killer PHP website Stefan Mischook to learn PHP and have found this very helpful. and if you google w3schools you will find loads of other resources that will help you
regards