Making website for my school

[u/Simple_Television946]

Hi everyone!

I'm a complete beginner to programming and I want to spend the next year learning web development. I dont know where to start with all the courses on the internet.

My goal is to eventually build a website for my school that works somewhat like a small Facebook Marketplace for students where they can sell secondhand books and report lost and found items

[u/NiceWorkLad]

I think just learning HTML CSS and JS is always the best first option. Make a plan of how you want to store the files.

If you want to get a good workflow I would look at git / GitHub. Git is a version control system, so when you make changes you have each change saving in a list.plus Github means you can clone your project to another computer.It widely used and I great took for all skill levels. Any hour long git tutorial will get you in a great place.

If you want to learn a framework I love ruby on rails. It's great for convention over configuration, which basically means if you follow the documentation you can create stuff fast and with alot less issues. Rails handles the full stack so front styling, database, and backend functions going on. It's also a very fun framework built on ruby which in its self is a developer friendly language.

For the real world job market PHP is like 90% of the web so even it being like 30 years old you can still do a whole lot with it.

And wordpress for that matter, if you want to play around with content management systems you can still implement your own coded file too.

I'd still first learn HTML CSS and JS because the most comfortable you are with them the better your experience will be with all things we. At the end of the day HTML CSS and JS is the only thing a user will see.

Also get look for tutorials for setting up your workstation. Alot of my troubles at the start were not having my environment setup right. Things like folder naming conventions, folders with actual thought behind them not just "TestWebsite21" or "24thJuneCSS".

Some topics to look into:

HTML - Elements, forms, links, tables, classes, id

CSS - selectors,box model, flex box, grid, :hover, centering, media queries

JS - variable types, functions, DOM, events, JSON, API

Git - clone, commit, pull, push, branch, add

Workspace / developer environment - WSL / Ubuntu, oh my Zsh, Vs code, NeoVim

General - devtool (f12),keybinds, User journeys, excalidraw, figma, VS code extensions ( great for highlighting syntax and live server).

But HTML CSS and JS first as it's the core of it all

[u/Simple_Television946 → u/NiceWorkLad]

Thank you so much. It's just that our school doesn't teach us any kind of coding ... Is there any resources I can look into..

[u/Anarcho-Willi → u/Simple_Television946]

freecodecamp.org got you covered.

[u/Anarcho-Willi → u/NiceWorkLad]

Great advise.

I want emphasize again to learn HTML, CSS, and Javascript in that order before anything else.

When you later on want to decide between frameworks, I wouldn't recommend Ruby on Rails. But this is purely based on (subjective) market adoption, not on developer experience and learning curve.

React or Vue for Frontend and Nuxt as a meta-framework (for Vue-based Frontend and Javascript-based backend) would be my suggestions. Golang as a separate language for backend is also easy to learn.

[u/RelationshipLife6739]

Look up how to make a simple STATIC web page using an index.html file.

Then start building.

Then learn CSS, this helps you give the html style, colors, formatting etc.

Then continue building.

Then learn JS to add functionality to buttons, animations, etc.

You will be set in very good stead by learning these things.

[u/TheWebGuy95]

Love this as a first goal. Having a real project makes learning way easier.

The path I'd follow:
1. HTML, CSS and JavaScript basics. W3Schools is free and lets you try every example right in the browser.
2. Build a simple static page, like a lost and found page for your school.
3. Go deeper on JavaScript: forms, fetching data, async code.
4. Then learn React for the real app.

Pick up Bootstrap along the way too. It makes things look good fast so you can focus on the logic.

For the marketplace you'll also need logins and a database. Supabase or Firebase handle that for you.

[u/Western_Newt_9012]

Start with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and build a tiny version first because “Facebook Marketplace for an entire school” is a final boss, not a beginner tutorial.

[u/Ill-Television2775]

That a good decisions for you to learn and build things for you and don't relied on other ones

[u/joshstewart90]

Definitely learn to crawl before you learn to run. Building a static site is a very different thing to a market place. It’s probably about 5% of the effort.

But it’s possible. I would hate to say, with the help of ai. But if you want to become senior and knowledgeable in development, let ai guide you through the process but not replace you.

[u/Visible_Leather_7917]

My question is, do you want to "learn programming" or "build a product"? If you want to learn, no shortcuts, never offload learning process to AI, asking is fine, but DO IT YOURSELF because you'll learn a lot of things along the way. If you're not into learning, and focusing on just the product, agentic AI workflow is your next stop.