Renewing My Chops
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WARNING, long post (I like the sound of my keyboard)
I am coming up to speed in modern website development and would like advice on how to effectively tool/retool myself. My main objective is to support a particular business idea for an LLC I recently formed. I want to be an able-bodied website developer and/or webmaster.
The question: What do I study/learn/train-on first and then next? Ins/Outs of Conrete5, PHP, MySQL, Perl, Ruby, JavaScript, AJAX, Flash, ...?
--- the rest of this is blathering to give more context, for those who have not already moved on to something more interesting ---
About the business: It's not porn. When I describe certain aspects it may seem like that's what it is. It's not. With that said, it is an analogous model for the content side and that might be a quick way to get a picture of what we want to do... just no naughty. We're going to provide content, some for free, some to premium subscribers. (Including video content that we will acquire through partners and through user sharing, some through linking to youtube, etc.) The content needs to be searchable by metadata/keywords we'll associate with the clips. We'll also want to provide some features, like allowing users to have their own personal library of videos or small files (of varioius types), forum discussions and social networking (localized/private to the site, and also able to integrate with Facebook, Twitter, etc). And we'll sell add space... hopefully high-end add space (of course).
About me: I have a B.S. in C.S. from a good school. I thought programming in C/Solaris was wicked awesome. In '94 I developed an array of socket-level network connections, encapsulated in structures with strongly enforced accessors to maintain 20 asynchronous connections between two proprietary systems parsing/building a custom messaging format over TCP/IP... man that was cool beans. Then I got into performance analysis and benchmarking to demonstrate contract obligations were met by my consulting company... it was cool and geeky (in a good way) but that led me to the dark side. It turned out I was leveraging technology expertise to make nice between firm partners and firm clients. Then I learned how to sling buzzwords. (I once used 4 forms of the word, "synergy" 20 times in an hour.) Poof, I'm a Technology Manager, with an emphasis on Manager. The short of it: I've got tech chops, and business savvy but the tech skills are sleepy and I need to wake them up. (I know unix/linux fairly well, kshell & awk were second nature; C is the language I know best, in conjunction with many flavors of SQL (most familiar with Oracle); I've done some Java development, dabbled with J2EE/EJB and have C#/.NET training; I have a "manager's" understanding of many modern web technologies, like REST, AJAX and Flex.)
(I also have access to a website designer of the graphic design ilk, though she is not all that tech-savvy beyond HTML, FrontPage/Dreamweaver; I'd like to give her tools/techniques she can use and let her establish look-n-feel.)
Approach I'd like to take: I'd like to take a just-in-time learning and "lean startup" approach. For example, I have a domain and website and want to run a blog so I can establish myself (or my persona) as an expert in my marketplace, and will probably set that up with a minamalistic WordPress implementation, hosted at HostMonster. That seems pretty easy. However I will also want to put up a corporate CMS site and am looking at using Concrete5 (on hostmonster).
I will likely eventually contract out or hire a team to maintain & enhance the site. For now, all I have available to invest is sweat equity.
FnkiJamr
I am coming up to speed in modern website development and would like advice on how to effectively tool/retool myself. My main objective is to support a particular business idea for an LLC I recently formed. I want to be an able-bodied website developer and/or webmaster.
The question: What do I study/learn/train-on first and then next? Ins/Outs of Conrete5, PHP, MySQL, Perl, Ruby, JavaScript, AJAX, Flash, ...?
--- the rest of this is blathering to give more context, for those who have not already moved on to something more interesting ---
About the business: It's not porn. When I describe certain aspects it may seem like that's what it is. It's not. With that said, it is an analogous model for the content side and that might be a quick way to get a picture of what we want to do... just no naughty. We're going to provide content, some for free, some to premium subscribers. (Including video content that we will acquire through partners and through user sharing, some through linking to youtube, etc.) The content needs to be searchable by metadata/keywords we'll associate with the clips. We'll also want to provide some features, like allowing users to have their own personal library of videos or small files (of varioius types), forum discussions and social networking (localized/private to the site, and also able to integrate with Facebook, Twitter, etc). And we'll sell add space... hopefully high-end add space (of course).
About me: I have a B.S. in C.S. from a good school. I thought programming in C/Solaris was wicked awesome. In '94 I developed an array of socket-level network connections, encapsulated in structures with strongly enforced accessors to maintain 20 asynchronous connections between two proprietary systems parsing/building a custom messaging format over TCP/IP... man that was cool beans. Then I got into performance analysis and benchmarking to demonstrate contract obligations were met by my consulting company... it was cool and geeky (in a good way) but that led me to the dark side. It turned out I was leveraging technology expertise to make nice between firm partners and firm clients. Then I learned how to sling buzzwords. (I once used 4 forms of the word, "synergy" 20 times in an hour.) Poof, I'm a Technology Manager, with an emphasis on Manager. The short of it: I've got tech chops, and business savvy but the tech skills are sleepy and I need to wake them up. (I know unix/linux fairly well, kshell & awk were second nature; C is the language I know best, in conjunction with many flavors of SQL (most familiar with Oracle); I've done some Java development, dabbled with J2EE/EJB and have C#/.NET training; I have a "manager's" understanding of many modern web technologies, like REST, AJAX and Flex.)
(I also have access to a website designer of the graphic design ilk, though she is not all that tech-savvy beyond HTML, FrontPage/Dreamweaver; I'd like to give her tools/techniques she can use and let her establish look-n-feel.)
Approach I'd like to take: I'd like to take a just-in-time learning and "lean startup" approach. For example, I have a domain and website and want to run a blog so I can establish myself (or my persona) as an expert in my marketplace, and will probably set that up with a minamalistic WordPress implementation, hosted at HostMonster. That seems pretty easy. However I will also want to put up a corporate CMS site and am looking at using Concrete5 (on hostmonster).
I will likely eventually contract out or hire a team to maintain & enhance the site. For now, all I have available to invest is sweat equity.
FnkiJamr
Great. There's so much info to sift through, I'm wondering what's the recommended method for learning the basic fundamentals of concrete5? on-line tutorial/video, book(s), forums, trial-and-error, google searches...?
(I think I can find my own way in learning PHP, but if you have must-have reference recommendations I'll take those too.)
(I think I can find my own way in learning PHP, but if you have must-have reference recommendations I'll take those too.)
Learn concrete5
enjoy.
-best