EVEN THE MOST SKILLED WEB DESIGNERS can find the complexities of creating a full-functioned Web site to be a daunting task. Here to help designers create sites that not only work, but work well and are easy to update and maintain is an easy-to-read guide to Web programming basics from best-selling author Charles Wyke-Smith. Just as architects need to understand building materials and their properties, Web designers need to understand the code that serves as the foundation of their sites. Wyke-Smith ensures they do by teaching designers that all dynamic Web sites consist of essentially three components: a browser interface, Web server middleware, and a database. The guide covers everything from Web coding concepts and principles to building sites, designing visual interfaces, developing databases, developing middleware, ensuring a good user experience (through good code!), testing and debugging, and more.

• Create dynamic Web sites that provide real-time responses to user inputs

• Understand the basic structures of all coding languages, such as variables, functions, conditionals, loops, and objects

• Use the power of PHP to program the business rules of your site

• Learn techniques for validating forms to reject erroneous or malicious data

• Import and export data from other applications via at les

• Build and query database tables using SQL to manage the data generated by your site's activity

• Develop a simple content management system

• Develop a password-protected members-only area of your Web site

• Build a template-based Web site with dynamic navigation