By now, assuming you’ve read every page of this book, you’ll know pretty much everything that’s required to create simple Web pages from scratch. This includes registering a domain name, renting some space on a web server, and creating pages using HTML for the content and CSS for the layout.
With this basic knowledge under your belt, it’s time to make an important decision. Will you continue to create web sites in this way, where each page is an HTML file that has to be edited and uploaded? Or will you do things The Other Way?
To understand what we mean by The Other Way, consider modern web sites such as Facebook, WordPress, LinkedIn, Bebo, Twitter, MySpace and Ebay. These are often referred to as Web 2.0 sites, but what does this mean exactly?
When you want to update your profile on Facebook, you don’t have to create an HTML file with Amaya and then use an FTP program to upload it. You just fire up your web browser, connect to the site, log in with a username and password, and manage your content directly within the site itself. It’s the same whether you’re posting a new page to your blog on wordpress.com, creating an item for sale on eBay, or using any of the other sites I mentioned. How do they do that? And more importantly, can anyone do it? Can you create sites that work in a similar way, that you can update directly from a browser without the need for an HTML editor or an FTP tool?
You may be surprised to know that creating a Web 2.0 site isn’t actually difficult. Mainly because the software that allows you to do it is available from various places. All you need to do is obtain it, install it on your hosting space, and start using your Web 2.0 site. Even better, many of the most popular programs are what’s known as FOSS (free, open-source software). This means that, not only are they completely free of charge, you also get the program source code so you can modify it if it doesn’t quite fit your needs.
The key to creating a Web 2.0 site, ie one that you can edit and maintain from within a web browser without the need for programs like Amaya and FileZilla, are two technologies known as server-side programming languages and server-side database engines. The former lets you write programs which run on the Web server. One of the things that these programs can do is to retrieve text from a database and present it in a web browser, which is where the second technology comes in.
We’ll learn how to use these technologies in much more detail during the forthcoming chapters in this book. There, we’ll learn how to write programs using the PHP language, and
access databases that use the MySQL database engine. This will allow us to create our own web-based applications, including those that work in the same way as Facebook and all the other Web 2.0 sites mentioned above.
But if you want to create a Web 2.0 site that performs a common function, such as a blog, or a discussion forum, or a simple web site, or a picture gallery, then here’s the good news. There are lots of ready-made open source applications. Just install one or more of them on your hosting space and you’re ready to roll.
A Web 2.0 application that performs the basic functions of creating and maintaining a standard web site is known as a Content Management System, or CMS. Sometimes the term used is WCMS, or Web Content Management System. As I said, we’ll leave the precise details, including how to write one using PHP and MySQL, until later. For now, let me show you just how useful the existing, free, ready-made applications are, and how easy they are to get up and running.
Note that this chapter isn’t an in-depth tutorial on how to use the products mentioned. If you decide that any or all of them would be a useful addition to your site, use what follows as a starting point and then search online for documents and forums that help you get your system working (and properly secured) the way you want.
For the purposes of this chapter we’re going to install and configure 4 different products:
· Joomla - One of the leading free WCMS products
· Wordpress - Another leading CMS, especially good for blog sites
· phpBB - A discussion forum
· Plogger - A picture gallery
There are, of course, many other free, open source web applications in addition to those detailed here. There are literally hundreds available, in many other categories. If you want to sell things via your web site, for example, there’s a free e-commerce suite called oscommerce. If you want to set up your own version of wikipedia, there are dozens of free wiki applications available. One great place to find Web software is www.hotscripts.com, which offers ready-made applications in a number of categories. Here’s just one part of one of their menu screens, showing the huge number of programs available, all for free.