Hi Michael, this a great forum for that. There are several threads here about web dev (both technical and business sides), and several people including myself who have a background in different aspects of web technology. I think it would be really helpful for you to say a little more about what audiences you want to reach, and what your business purposes are for your web site. Is it to find clients? Deliver media from a library, online to paying subscribers? Have a way for media design clients to drop off materials for you to work on, and discuss projects that are underway? Also, how familiar are you already with the technology? Are you comfortable getting into all the tech geek details yourself, or would you want to hire someone for that?

 

Are you more interested in building a website or building web applications? The latter involving a backend.

A social media and booking site sounds like the latter.

 

There are a ton of resources for building web applications.

First off for the frontend: HTML, CSS and JavaScript are the standards. You can find great resources out there, many of them free.

For the backend, which is where you handle the database and so on, there are many choices as to which lannguage to use. Some common ones are PHP (with Laravel), Python (with Django or Flask), JavaScript (with NodeJS, you would have to learn JavaScript anyways, because it's the main frontend language).

So, pick one and then start learning.

A great resources for getting an overview of web developent is this video:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVXcqO9A1vo


(Don't get overwhelmed or discouraged by all the things you'll see, it's really a collection, and you don't need to learn all of it).

Anyways, I hope that helps. Let me know if there is anything else I can help you with!

 

I would do would SoftStone said. I have enjoyed working with Python/Django as my backend framework.

I find python syntax to be clean and easy to pickup. You wouldn't be steering yourself wrong with Ruby on Rails, or Node and JavaScript.

The actual coding isn't necessarily the most difficult part of the process. I think smart design of your application, how you organize your database schema, how you are passing around data and where you're handling logic is what separates a more seasoned developer from the rest.

I currently work as a full stack developer at a very respectable company, and have no background in software besides teaching myself for over a year and a 9 week bootcamp I attended.

Youtube is super helpful. repl.it is a cool site where you can have an IDE setup for various languages and test both front and backend code.

I would also recommend building single page web applications with the aid of AJAX and a front end framework like React or Angular. Single page is basically the modern internet. You don't want to be making calls to the backend every button click or page a user goes to, slowing the application.

Django has a good tutorial in its documentation. I would follow and build the app they have you setup. Reading docs is essential for dev.

Best advice I can give - Just build something, and don't give up when frustrated.

 

Check out code academy, and also Udemy, they're both great resources for learning how to code... as far as backend's concerned, I like React.

This is a nice beginner course
Build Responsive Real World Websites with HTML5 and CSS3

and codeacademy html (free)
Welcome to Codecademy!