Where to start? Need help

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1

Hi Everyone,

I am trying to learn something new, and have decided to take on web design and coding.

I don’t want to start with something simple, I would like to start with something hard and learn by doing. I wanted to create a calendar that had a drag on drop feature to it while at the same time having the option to be populated by a database. I would want to be able to come back to the site later and have any changes I made to the calendar still be there. I am willing to sacrafice drag and drop for now if it helps me get results faster. In its place I would imagine something a little more like Outlook (drop down boxes for me to input month, day, time) to have the calendar update in real time.

To assist me in learning, I purchased two sitepoint books. I have “Build Your Own Web Site The Right Way Using HTML and CSS” and “Build Your Own Database Driven Web Site Using PHP and MySQL.” While these books help explain things like creating a table or using a database, I am unable to see how these two books will help me get to what I am describing in the previous paragraph. For example, I could use HTML and CSS to create a nice looking empty calendar. I could also use MySQL to create a database for each day of the month, but how do I get them to go together? In addition I think I would need to learn JavaScript if I wanted the drag and drop.

I know I am taking on a lot very fast (probably too much), but I am looking for a little guidence before I become too frustrated. =)

Thank you for reading and responding to my post!

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Yes another script java or action would be required for drag and drop.

But as with any code (meaning the code of your site too) you are given a problem to solve or have figure out the combination of the code to do what you want it to do.

the idea behind the books you have is to teach you fundamentals, concepts and or best practice’s by giving you working examples and defining how each element works.

It is your job as a web developer to decide how you are going to put your combination of tools, knowledge and resources together in order to come up with an end result.

(study the SQL book hard, the DB model is probably the hardest and most important part of most web projects)