Before we start I am fully aware that the below comments might not be everybody’s cup of tea. I am primarily a visual person as I guess are most of my readers. I am a creative to the bones BUT I think its important to at least know about the web and its technologies. How things work ultimately define how you design for them. Recently I have found myself practicing this knowledge, “fusing creativity and technology”. Whatever! - the point I’m attempting to make is that I’m not turning nerdy on you, just trying to help people who might be interested…

What’s The Story?

Previously, when I first started web development a few years ago, I always edited my html locally (on my computers hard rive), and tested it via opening it with a browser. This does work the majority of the time however when I started to look at developing with server side code (especially php) I found that the browser had problems reading it locally.

PHP, for those who do not know, is a language, a step on from HTML, enabling you to send information to a server and allowing it to send things back to effect the information displayed on that page. You can also store this information in a database, which sits on the server. All these are useful features – this blog for example is run by Wordpress which uses PHP.

When I discovered that PHP didn’t work on my local server I didn’t have time to look into it and to get around the problem I simply used to FTP the php files up to an internet host and tested from there. Now that’s all well and good but after a while it becomes a little tedious to keep having to save a file then go to the browser, then upload it. Then I found these:

Installing MAMP and Wordpress
Enabling Apple’s Supplied PHP

These are tutorials in which you can install php (and in the first one MSQL) to your local computer. I realize these are for Apple Macs so apologies PC people (not getting into a debate about that right now! If anybody can recommend a link on how to achieve this on a PC please leave a comment).

After installing php on your local computer, you can then develop a php site, and database, locally - simply saving a php file, flicking to a browser and refreshing. When the site is ready then you can upload it for the world to see. This saves you time (and therefore money - donations gratefully accepted ;-).

Other Useful Links

Below are some useful links to the tools I use for web development be aware these are all for Apple Mac’s):

• Cyberduck Free FTP programme
• BBEdit Superb HTML and text editing software
• RAGE WebDesign - 2.8 Free alternative to BB Edit
• Adobe Creative Suite Including Illustrator and Photoshop to create graphics
• Flash for simple 2D animation

What no Dreamweaver? No sir! we write everything from scratch. In my view its the only way to ensure clean best practice code with each site that is produced. If you’ve never done it, get your hands dirty chaps - you never know you might enjoy it!

Conclusion

So these are how I “do” websites. Can anybody throw anything else into the mix? Feel free to make a comment below…

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 1st, 2007 at 2:47 pm and is filed under General Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.