A rough roadmap for learning web development

Suppose you want to learn to build web applications. Where do you begin? This page offers a very rough roadmap.

1. Learn the key technologies used to build web applications

When building a web application, you’ll need to know a few technologies – each serving a particular purpose. See the learning resources section at the bottom of this page for resources to help with your learning journey.

HTML

HTML lets you render content on a web page (text, form fields, tables, etc).

CSS

CSS lets you style pages and make them look however you want.

Server-side programming language (PHP)

A server-side programming language like PHP (probably easiest to start with) or Python lets you write your main application code to do things like:

• Load data from or store data in your own databases (e.g., take user input from a form and store the data in a database).
• Connect to an external API like Google Calendar and load data from there.
• Dynamically build HTML (e.g., display the logged-in user’s name, the current date or the number of records from a database).

Database (MySQL)

You’ll need a way of storing data somewhere. As you learn PHP, you’ll typically learn to use it with a database like MySQL.

JavaScript

You use JavaScript to make pages more interactive (e.g., show a pop-up modal or a toast notification). You can go a long way without writing much JavaScript so maybe not as important to learn initially.

2. Learn a web framework (Laravel)

Once you know the basics, you can use a web “framework” to make it easier and quicker to implement common features like user registration, login, sending emails, working with a database, etc.

Laravel is a good choice to begin with.

3. Learn to publish your website

See here 🙂

Learning resources

• Laracasts: PHP for beginners: Should teach you HTML, CSS, PHP, and MySQL (four key technologies) though the focus is more on PHP. CodeAcademy also offer good interactive courses for HTML, CSS, PHP, and JavaScript.
• Laracasts: Laravel 8 for beginners: This should teach you how to use Laravel to quickly build web applications.