Should I learn Rails, Joomla or DHTML as a beginner?

Question

This is not a core programming problem as most posts on this website are, forgive me for that but I didn't know where else to ask this.

I am a beginner in web languages and want to build a small website for our family business, mostly a bunch of galleries that would display our different product lines with prices and some basic specs for customers to get an idea..currently I'm pursuing comp science at the undergrad level

So here is the problem, I can't decide between platforms

I started out with HTML and making a basic mock up but that didn't quite work out as i needed to have dynamic galleries that was quite hard to code by hand and since we need to update often it would be a pain even if I did manage to get it going

then I thought of Joomla as it would be easy to update but soon realized that its not that easy to customize templates

Then I started reading about Ruby on Rails and what it offers and it sounded really interesting might be useful in developing applications that we possibly would need in some time.

so I wanted to know from the community which course should one pursue: DHTML, Joomla, RoR Please keep in mind that I want this to be a learning experience that will be useful possibly in the future in my professional career and at the same time get the job done.

I would also greatly appreciate any resources or suggestions that the community might have.

Answer 1

Learning we development and design is not a small task. It'll take you years to get even moderately good, so if you need to get something up and running now, I'd not recommend you to build it yourself.

There are a lot of nice Joomla templates and plugins available if you are ready to pay a small price for it. Search around a bit more, and you might find something that works for you.

Answer 2

I would start with a CMS such as Joomla or perhaps even Wordpress. Grab a template and tweak it - this will be a good introduction to coding websites as the really hard parts are already taken care of.

Once you have finished the site that you are working on then you can think about moving on to a framework such as Rails or even a PHP based once like Code Igniter. The frameworks will take a lot longer to figure out but at the end of the day they will give you a better learning experience then just tweaking a CMS template.

Answer 3

Since what you are trying to do is a pure learning exercise, I suggest you look around into a lot of things(rails/css/javascript/php etc) until you finally find the one that you will have fun playing-with. You learn faster when you can tinker with it.

Answer 4

Ruby on Rails may 'seem' easy to an advanced web developer. Its an advanced framework and needs considerable amount of investment in terms of time and interest and most importantly you need to have an aptitude for it. If you REALLY want to do this, and you have a general aptitude for Web programming, I suggest you start with Wordpress. Its search-engine friendly and will get you running in no time.

Answer 5

You are actually comparing apples to oranges here as DHTML, RoR, and Joomla are not the same thing. You are comparing a mark up language, to a programing framework, to a content management system. You could feasibly learn a CMS (Joomla, Drupal, Wordpress, etc) and never learn to code a single line of HTML or PHP.

For the purpose of getting a site that you can manage and edit yourself, then what you are asking is which CMS should you use. There are dozens of CMSes and opinions on which one is the best. In general are the big 3 - Wordpress, Joomla, and Drupal. Wordpress is by far the easiest to learn. It has a very simple admin that shouldn't take more than a few minutes to figure out. There are tons of themes and extensions that go along with it. The downside is that it's coded to be a blogging platform, not an extensible CMS. That means that doing things other than blogging are harder to accomplish (relative to Joomla and Drupal). It can still be done, but the more complex the site, the harder it is to do in Wordpress.

Joomla is the next step in ease of use. The admin is significantly more complex than WordPress, but a tech savvy user will get the basics down in the first couple of hours or so. Extendding Joomla is much easier for both the developer since the framework is specifically designed to be extended, and the user since installing is very quick and easy for most extensions. It's a pretty good balance between ease of use for the admin and ease of extension for the developer.

Drupal is probably the most powerful of the 3, but the trade off is in the user admin. Most non-developers will struggle to understand how the admin works or what taxonomy is and how it works. Again, the trade off is that it allows developers much more power in extending Drupal. Drupal makes it easier for the developer to accomplish much more complex tasks than Joomla or Wordpress.

At the end of the day, all 3 can accomplish the exact same thing on a website. You need to determine which one will accomplish your particular needs the best.

That said, you should still learn HTML and a programming language. My recommendation would be to learn PHP and mySQL. That will give you a solid foundation on which to build on once you are well versed. Other languages and flavors of SQL will come easier, plus many of the large open source projects are done in PHP/mySQL.

Answer 6

I would choose Joomla. They have a vast array of components and modules that should meet your needs. As far as customization, if you are a beginner this will be difficult no matter the platform. DHTML is not a platform. DHTML is mainly javascript, css and php. I suggest you get some books on doing dynamic stuff with javascript and jquery, styling with css and creating MVC sites with PHP. When you learn all this first your job customizing an whatever platform will be much much easier.