What are good resources for learning about the web back-end?

Question

There seems to be a very large deficit of information out there when it comes to web programming. All the resources I can find try are based on teaching you the front-end (HTML/CSS/scripting) in a specific language, but they don't go deep when explaining what is happening on the back-end. Know any good resources?

For example, the replies to the following question contained alot information I'd never get in a "Learn PHP in 30 Seconds!" type book: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/147187/why-do-we-need-anything-more-than-http-get-put-post/147195

Edit: An imaginary title would be "What you need to know before building a web app: the language agnostic edition".

Answer 1

To get a good understanding of what is going on among other things, using more JavaScript laboratorys such as jQuery and Prototype, I recommend you read the DOM (Document Object Model) This is the main principle for the most part within the web today.

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/books/JavaScript_Programmers.aspx

Answer 2

This is kind of a huge area. You could learn about any or all of the following:

Server OS: Linux or Windows

Web Server: Apache, IIS are probably the most common, but there are several others

Databases: MySQL, PosGRE, SQLite, SQL Server, Oracle, etc

A backend programming language: Ruby, PHP, Java (various flavors), Python, Perl, C#, etc

A framework: Rails, CakePHP, Zend, .net, JSP, etc.

A CMS: Drupal, Django, Joomla, WordPress, etc.

So you kind of need to narrow down your interests a bit. Once you do, pretty much all of the above have reams of free information available about them on the web. Or go to Amazon and search for one of the above, and you'll find lots of books. I tend to like those by Apress and O'Reilly, but they are hardly the only ones putting out good technical books.

If you can give a better sense of what you actually want to learn about, I'm sure folks can give you good recommendations of specific websites, books, podcasts, blogs, etc.