Noob web development questions

[PokerGuy]

A long time ago, when Jesus horses.....errrr......dinosaurs roamed the earth, I did some basic development/programming. I set up some ugly web pages with dynamic content driven by a foxpro database (yes, THAT old ).

Now I want to build a site again, but I'm way out of the loop. I've done reading on the various .net flavors, PHP, MySQL etc, but would appeciate some input from those in the know.

I like the ease of use of the VS 2008 Express edition, I could learn that, but I assume I'd need a windows based host to make use of that, correct?

I already have a hosting account with a real host, but it's linux based so I assume .net stuff is out unless I want to switch hosting providers. Are there any web page development suites similar to VB2008 with regard to the open source tools like php and mysql? I need a wysiwyg page designer, so I'm considering dreamweaver. Good? Bad?

Any input you have on possible alternatives/direction is appreciated.

Note: this is not for a business, it's just for a hobby of mine, I wouldn't be creating anything requiring serious horses.

 

[Aberforth]

You can use Microsoft Expression Web Designer which is optimized for ASP.net and new web standards. It's not free but it's quite easy to work with.

Let me know if you want a Starter .NET hosting with SQL DB, I have a offer link. Just PM me, I can't post it here.

 

[clamum]

Yeah unless I'm mistaken, apps/sites you produce with Visual Studio are Windows-only so you'd need an ASP or ASP.NET based host.

I don't know of any development suites similar to Visual Studio for PHP and MySQL. PHP isn't very comparible to ASP.NET in terms of features and language. So if you need a WSYIWYG editor, I heard Dreamweaver is a good option.

 

[PokerGuy]

Originally posted by: Aberforth
You can use Microsoft Expression Web Designer which is optimized for ASP.net and new web standards. It's not free but it's quite easy to work with.

Let me know if you want a Starter .NET hosting with SQL DB, I have a offer link. Just PM me, I can't post it here.

Expression Web Designer is the newer flavor of what used to be FrontPage right? Does it allow you to work with non-.net stuff? One of the things I liked about frontpage (even though it otherwise sucked), is that you could easily grab a theme and build a bunch of pages from that theme so they all had a similar look and feel. I don't know if dreamweaver or something else does that as well.

PM sent

 

[drebo]

Dreamweaver does have the capability to use templates.

 

[Aberforth]

Expression web designer supports all kinds of templates with CSS 3 support, it's better than Dreamweaver CS3 in my experience.

http://img258.imageshack.us/img258/1182/thdthdwg1.jpg

 

[Crusty]

FYI, Mono can run .NET applications in Linux. There's a few portability issues, but so long as you aren't calling any Win32 methods via P/Invoke it should be fairly easy to get compatibility with Mono.

 

[blackdogdeek]

i think PDT is a php IDE. it's built on eclipse i think. should be free.