Learn to crawl before trying to walk. Build a website with just html first. Feel the pain of copy-pasting html, having to edit 20 files to change a menu item. T

Learn to crawl before trying to walk. Build a website with just html first. Feel the pain of copy-pasting html, having to edit 20 files to change a menu item. Then try applying PHP or Ruby to fix this. How would you do it? Maybe just an include/require statement would do. Then try to add dynamic stuff and forms. Would you mix sql, php and html or would you try to separate them? How about making a simple query builder? Do you want to define your data constraints in the sql database, add cascades and foreign keys, write procedures? Or, wouldn't touch sql with a 10-foot pole, so you wrap it in some nice code and call it "active record". Stay away from wordpress, drupal and most other php stuff, you will learn only bad practices. Think about it, PHP people were still sucking on sql injections when Rails came out. And read Code Complete 2, still relevant.