I have been semi hard at work planning, designing and creating the website. The first steps that I have taken have been to create a database with user information and create the front page to log in.
In creating and designing this portion of the website, I asked myself “How am I going to limit the number of accounts that can be created?” I don’t have infinite space or support to handle a large number of users, so I do not want an “anyone can create an account” website. I also do not want to hand create every account possible for the website using SQL. So I came up with the idea to have an admin login that gives access to the create an account function.
Yes, I will still have to log in personally and create account, but I now will have a website to do it for me with input. People who want to use my website will have to request access via email and then I can process the requests and create accounts at my preference.
I have also decided to proceed with a single tenant data architecture. I am not skilled enough to create a multi-tenant structure, nor will I have enough tenants to reap the benefits of the multi-tenant structure.
I currently have a working prototype database and login page that uses the poor MD5 encryption for the passwords in the database. It is simple to use, and I doubt I will have many attackers on my test environment.
I have also created a page that will encrypt passwords in the database as I create and delete test accounts.
So, as I have been learning a new language, the main reason that I picked up a book to read is, first, it is a structured and organized reference to the language, second, it provides someones experience to work with, third, it provides projects that can be completed to exercise and practice your skills.
The third reason is the largest reason for me to read a book to learn something. For me, that is always the hardest part of learning a language. It does all the hard work, which is coming up with an idea to apply the knowledge.
Lucky for me, I have my first project request. The requester: my wife.
She being the talented and intuitive person that she is, and the picky person that she is, wants some custom software to do our budget. There are many software applications that will do this exact same thing, but she wants something simple without any other bells and whistles, that does exactly what she wants. Now, its my job to deliver on that request.
We have already had our first “meeting” on the project to discuss functions of the application. It was difficult to get her to slow down and let me explore the different functions of the application. The basics of the program are that it will be a web based application in php (no surprise there) with a mysql server for the database. It will require a log in to access her account. It will be a simple application, but I hope I can make it fit her needs.
Needless to say, the rest of my learning will be geared toward finishing this project. I have a tentative 3 month deadline until I wish to have it completed.
I am Dan.
I am a college student.
I am in no way an expert… yet.
I wanted to go out on my own and learn a new coding language. I already know Java to some extent and am familiar with HTML. The language that seemed interesting and useful is PHP.
I am positive that there are many people out there who want to learn a new language and maybe that language is PHP. You are not alone! There are many of us who want to do the same thing.
I am here to share my experiences of learning a new programming language. This blog is for anyone who has been there, who will be there, and anyone who is there right now. If you already have experience, I feel like you should share it, and that is what I am going to do with this blog.
My Tools
- Ubunto Operating System
- LAMP Stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP)
- Text Book – “Apache, MySQL, PHP All in One”
- VIM Text Editor
- A great, experienced, brother-in-law to answer all of my troubling questions (and some non-troubling ones as well)
