My first website project

Thumpercats

Okay guys, well I am completely new to working with making webpages. I can program in java decent enough, but I do not know any html or php. I want to make a website that has 3 pages in it. Me and my buddies are going to have a madden tournament, and I wish to make this website in order to help coordinate when the games should be played and all that good stuff.

Page 1:
Main page
include rules of the league.

Page 2:
Stats page.
will show the stats of players who their next game is and all the good crap.

I believe I can make both of these pages quite easy with microsoft frontpage and upload them.

the one I would like suggestions for is page 3.

the Chat page.

I want to make a simple page that they could all log in and post messages on the webpage itself.
I really don't know where to begin with this. I've never worked with cookies or sessions.

It doesnt have to look pretty. I just want the username to appear next to the message and have it added to the top of the page pushing the last 19 things said or so down one line. After that messages will get bumped off...

Does anyone have any ideas where I can learn the code that I will need to use?

RiCtee

If you have no experience in html or making webpages, I would suggest you use a CMS (Content Management System). It helps you make the pages with little or no knowledge at all. All you need to do is enter your content and configure how you want it displayed (using mostly 'point-and-click').

Check out Joomla. It is a very powerful CMS with a lot of extensions so you can add what you like.

flatliner

I would recommend, if your willing to learn that is... http://www.w3schools.com/ or http://www.tizag.com/ two very useful sites. Its were I learnt CSS, html, javascript, php and mysql very easy to understand. Coming from a java back round you will have np learning php or javascript. Html and css handy to learn via these sites, very simple but yet gives you a good over all knowledge of the subject in relatively short tutorials.

SamiTheBerber

For a java coder, you are pretty sure used java's API. This is good start, because PHP has good manual with all functions. It is good, but I would like to have more examples for few things. However the manual can be found in http://www.php.net/docs.php You can code PHP with class-orient way like java, but also inline-coding. Try make your PHP in version 5, because it has error catching tools. PHP4 has classes like java, but you still should use PHP5. PHP doesn't have compiler, so if the error will show up, it will be shown to everyone, who is on the buggy page.

Like flatliner told you, W3Schools has good tutorials for basic (X)HTML. You should do a favour for yourself and begin to write valid XHTML 1.1. http://validator.w3.org is the site, where you can validate your XHTML-file. You will get error and warning messages nearly same style as in java.

You should use inline styles, because all styles should be in CSS-files. W3Schools has good CSS-tutorial, but examples can be found all over the Internet. There is nice CSS artwork in http://csszengarden.com/. You really should try to keep content and style on different files. If you have written latex, you know what I mean.

I hope these will help you at start Smile