what languages do i need?

[spowns]

Hi I am planning a website that will need the help of a web developer. The only programming language I know is html.

I need to create a script that I can log into and post the news with. When the news is posted I want a comment feature, and have polls to rate the news.

when I submit the news through the script I also want to be able to set an expiration date, after the date the update would be deleted off the site.

What languages are used to create this (cgi, php, etc.) I want to know so I can study it and at least have a basic sense of what I need, and what my developer needs to do.

[jatar_k]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld spowns,

first things first, find out what is available through your host. If you don't have a host then look around for the scripts you need and see what languages the ones that have the functionality you need are written in.

>> What languages are used to create this

asp, perl, php among others. Those are, more or less, the big 3. cgi isn't actually a language even though people often make that generalization cgi could be perl or it also could be php, probably others too.

[Mocksy]

I'll try and give my perspective :

I've been using ASP for quite sometime and found it pretty good for most of the stuff I want to do.

However, if you are a beginner I have found that PHP does tend to have a better following definitely when it comes to finding free examples etc probably due to it being round for a little longer and its open source nature...

ASP or PHP is definitely the way to go. Newer languages such as ASP.net do offer even better functionality but finding hosts is a little trickier.

check out hotscripts.com they have just about every darn script you need... you might not even need a developer...

hope that helps.
Mox.

[cmatcme]

If you find learning langauges difficult and wish to take Easy Street, I've heard php is best. More people are writing their pages in php and in one old post here there were discussing why php is now popular than asp. They said php was a sharing community - but that was ages ago - and in other languages (asp, cgi, perl) people were more bothered about making money!

The post is around here somewhere! I'll go find it now!

______________

It's not the post I was on about but they are still 2 posts discussing the same thing

PHP V ASP [webmasterworld.com] April 2002
ASP V PHP [webmasterworld.com]April 2005

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cmatcme

[mikelly]

Try a CMS (Content Management System) such as PHP-Nuke they do all the things you want and have lots of followers so that there are lots of plug-ins, graphics, modules, modifications etc.

If you have Fantastico as part of a CPanel hosting package it will install one in about 3 clicks and it contains at least 8 of them.

If you don't have Fantastico get it at SourceForge they are all open source software (like Lynix, Apache, etc) so they don't cost anything and can be modified as you wish.

After you have it set up and tweaked a little you can either learn the programs flow (they are written in PHP with a DB Backend) or hire someone to do it. If youu hire someone to do it get one of the ones who specialize in that software since once you learn it it is fast and easy to modify absolutely any part of the system. There is a learning curve on the flow of the program even if you are fluent in PHP.