Looking For Help With A Long Term Project

[feleynae]

Hello

 

I'm a young university student seeking to make his first real website. I've learned dreamweaver and some HTML and PHP in school, and have setup things like php forums in the past on my own, but I'd like to create a website like WoWhead or Thottbot type website for a new game that has not come out yet. I understand that those websites were massive undertakings for a very popular game, but my end goal would be a similar (but smaller website).

 

I'm willing to learn, and fully understand it'll take a lot of work because those sites have large amounts of staff, but I have no idea where to start in creating a similar website. I can look at the site and tell it takes a lot of database work for items, armor, abilities and such, but I'm at loss on how to generate what I assume is multiple databases and to make them searchable.

 

I know this is probably a complex problem that'll take hours of time to make a reality, but I'd really like to try to create it than to not try at all.

 

Apologies if this is not in the right section, and thank you for any and all help that you can provide, even if turns out to be none

 

Specifically: I'm asking what languages to learn or what programs or addons I should be looking at, or what kind of coding I need to do... I'm not asking anyone to do this work for me!

Edited December 13, 2012 by feleynae

[falkencreative]

If you would want to create the site from scratch, you'd need to know HTML, CSS (since all sites are based on that) and probably use PHP and MySQL for the dynamic/database side of the site. You'd only need one database, but you would need multiple tables -- probably a table for each main topic (items, armor, abilities, etc.) To access that data in the database, you'd need to understand PHP CRUD (Creating/Reading/Updating/Deleting records in a database), and ideally you'd probably want a login system of some sort that woud allow you to log into the backend of the site and make edits to the content that has been stored in the database. I'm sure you can find articles and tutorials on that, or you might check out my tutorial on "PHP Login Using OOP & MVC": http://www.killervideostore.com/video-courses/php-projects.php or the http://killersites.com/video-library/ within the PHP section. I would highly suggest you learn more about OOP and the MVC pattern, because it will make it much easier to structure and organize your application.

 

One thing you might consider though... basically, it looks like you are wanting to build a wiki for your specific game. It might be worth looking into some open source wiki projects, in case they can be adapted for your needs, or even if Wordpress could be used. I imagine you could use a combination of custom post types and the Advanced Custom Fields plugin http://www.advancedcustomfields.com/ to do a lot of what you want to do, with much less effort than building entirely from scratch. Wordpress would be convenient in the sense that it would give you an easy way to make edits to the content of the site, and already has a lot of the functionality you need, like menus, search functionality, etc.

[feleynae]

Thank you very much for the answer Ben!

 

I've spent the last few days designing the site on paper trying to figure out what is necessary and what is not, and I've started delving into everything you suggested.

 

I do have one last question though if you don't mind

 

Scouring the internet the past few days looking for sites that may be closer to what I want to do/less complicated, I stumbled upon http://ffxiv.mozk-tabetai.com/

 

This is EXACTLY what I want, with easy to click collapsible menus and an item database all there, but organized already nice and neatly.

 

This seems different that what you recommended though, or at least I can't get my head around how to do something similar to that which is far more interactive and less bland than just a database search, so my question is what kind of programming would I need to do to make something similar?

 

Thanks again, and I can't wait to finally get into the in depth programming of the site, it'll be quite an adventure for sure