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php, mysql, and social networking/commercial site

Posted: Thu May 10, 2007 4:22 am
by g2g
Hi Guys, anyone who can help,
I got some books because I really want to learn how to program a social networking/commercial site for a business project I’m working on. As far as I’ve read, the books, including a php advanced book, don’t specifically use such examples, though I’m sure it’s all about being creative after one grasps the programming language. But I was wondering if anyone can point me to any resources that would help speed the process of learning and programming my own site to my specific needs, using xhtml, php and mysql. I searched the web and there are a couple of social networking site programs (scripts) that one could upload to one’s site, but they’re expensive and one is allowed to use them only on one website and, although they say the scripts are open source, their license agreements only let you tailor them to one specific site’s needs and not other sites. I thought of buying the program and learning the coding from their source codes but that would mean I would be using their code when I develop a site and that would be illegal. Besides, I don’t want to have to buy one license for each site I develop. Although I’m willing to learn and am already having a good time with the php books I've just bought, which by the way I had bought after reading and trying to build my site with the help of Elizabeth Castro’s HTML, XHTML, and CSS book, I wouldn’t want to spend thousands of hours trying to come up with my unique site if there’s a faster way to go. I hope I’ve not over written and I hope the question is useful for others. I also look forward to completing my new books (and my site, with help from this forum). I look forward to hearing from someone.

G2G
Newbie Web Developer

Posted: Thu May 10, 2007 4:29 am
by CoderGoblin
Google is your friend. Decide what "parts" you want and google for them. See what is out there. Learn from what they do (being aware of any patent/license issues). As an example you could, for a forum simply plug in the phpBB forum.

Posted: Thu May 10, 2007 10:32 am
by onion2k
I don't want to put you off learning PHP because it's ace and fun and everything, but I have to say you've picked an incredibly difficult project to learn on. Social networking sites are one of the most complicated applications to build even for an expert. You really have to plan it well from the start if you're going to come up with some usable code that doesn't fall to bits as soon as it starts getting used a lot.

I can say for certain that there aren't any shortcuts ... you'll end up putting in a massive amount of energy if you want to get your site built and get it noticed regardless of the path you take.

Posted: Sun May 13, 2007 8:33 pm
by aceconcepts
What I would probably recommend after a bit of getting to know PHP and MySQL is to develop a shopping cart. This, I think will exercise some good techniques and will give u good insight into PHP development and MySQL.

Posted: Sun May 20, 2007 12:13 pm
by maliskoleather
aceconcepts wrote:What I would probably recommend after a bit of getting to know PHP and MySQL is to develop a shopping cart. This, I think will exercise some good techniques and will give u good insight into PHP development and MySQL.
ditto.

shopping carts are probably the best way to experience what you need to learn. from there, you could go on and make an attempt at something more complex.

and i can not possibly stress enough how hard social bookmarking sites are to develop. (I just finished something simmilar to digg.com, and am currently building another) Just make sure you plan all the functions/concepts out very well ahead of time, and have an understanding of how they will interact.

Posted: Sun May 20, 2007 5:54 pm
by s.dot
Social networking sites are indeed a big project. But, that's how I learned. I wanted to build one, so I did. 2 years and some odd months later, I am still udpating code and writing new code.

If you truly want to grasp the php language, delving head-first into programming a social networking site will teach you many, many skills.