places for beginners to discuss web development concepts?

**stupidquestion** · February 3rd, 2015

I'd like to develop a web site in order to implement ideas I have, and always have questions. I need to understand as much as possible, but it's slow to try to read everything when you're not familiar with the standard approaches. It would be nice to get clarification and advice from experienced people in an informal setting, even if my questions can be answered by googling. Sometimes I'm too new to a concept like scaling and performance, and fear that my questions would get locked in some forums for being too general. Is there a forum that can be used like a chatroom for this purpose -- or do you think people should read manuals thoroughly by themselves until they understand everything?

By the way, are there standard courses one can take for web development?

Thanks.

**Matthew_Harrop** · February 3rd, 2015

Why not ask here? There is no such thing as a stupid question and anything here can be quickly searched for too, so it almost becomes like an archive of information easily at everyone's disposal!

What have you already tried in terms of learning? Just read books or have you taken a specific course/series of courses?

**stupidquestion** · February 4th, 2015

I can search for answers online but there are often unwritten stuff that I'm unclear about. For example I'm trying to learn about setting up MySQL replication, but even before step one, I have basic questions like, "do the two computers have to run on the same OS and version of MySQL? Will performance improve if the master is much faster than the slave?" etc.

Which subforum here would be good for chatting basic web development topics? Are basic questions appropriate for the Server Platforms forum? I recall posting questions in the general or beginner forums but sometimes got no reply. Maybe the experts think I haven't read the manual, or the topic is uninteresting to the general public. Sometimes I don't have a precise question but would appreciate recommendations, like a good tutorial for something.

I don't know what professional webmasters had to learn in terms of courses or certifications. I took some database courses many years ago but only remember basic things now. I've tried installing Ubuntu Server and making a site with it for local testing, but there are many things I need to learn, like security and high performance concepts.

**Matthew_Harrop** · February 4th, 2015

To answer your question there: No, they don't have to be running the same OS, SQL databases should be platform independent in terms of connecting and querying. The version i'm not sure on, but it shouldn't be mandatory for the client to be running MySql (or any other for that matter). It just requires a connection protocol to be able to connect to the database (Navicat for mac or MySql Dashboard ect.) Mind you, if your connecting to a website to query a database, it shouldn't matter one bit, the code that you write for your webpage should be handled by the browser

Try the development and programming subforum, there are some great people that roam around in there with a fantastic level of knowledge so even if they don't know the 100% correct answer they may well know the right direction.