Web development languages?

[katokato]

So i have an idea of making a website for Meme quizzes... I know c++ and some java already but i am wondering which web development language is best suited for this?

I was thinking about ruby on rails or html or something but what is the difference between all these web development languages?

What is php used primarily for in contrast to something like html or ruby on rails?

[Bahama]

HTML is a markup language interpreted by web browsers to display general fonts, formatting, images, windows, and most other basic display purposes on web pages on the internet; Ruby is not.

Ruby is a general purpose language that is interpreted.

PHP is usually for server-side scripting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server-side_scripting

The difference in contrast of PHP to HTML is apparently obvious: HTML is for markup, PHP is for scripting, which is programming.

For the simplicity of a "Meme quiz" you could get away with HTML and Javascript, CSS and Internet Explorer 6.

[ModShop]

Internet Explorer 6 is a web browser. A terrible and out dated one at that. But your right about JavaScript, CSS and HTML. That's more than enough to make a simple interactive web page.

[katokato]

So i must learn html, css, and javascript?

Whats the difference between that and Ruby on Rails? I know that ruby is just a general purpose language, but what about ruby on rails framework?

All of this is also hosted on an apache webserver right? LAMP or Wamp?

For my program design im thinking of dropping a text file which is parsed by the program into a quiz, the program ignores things like "Question: " and only uses the things after it to make a quiz question. In essence, all im doing is parsing a text file and dropping the parsed contents into various text fields and an imagebox for display......

That way, after i make the program, i can write a bunch of different quizzes without changing a line of code.

Does javascript or html let me do I/O file operations like in c/c++?

for example---

myquiz.txt

Question: What is this x meme?

Questionchoices:

A. This
B. that

Answer: A

Picture: /directory/my dir/etc.jpg

[Dy7SLyTq]

ror is also for web dev. personally i like php with html. and *AMP depens on ur os. WAMP for windows, LAMP for linux and MAMP for mac. personally i like the ubuntu server with LAMP

[katokato]

Yeah im thinking about hosting LAMP on a very light linux distro (my original thought was slackware but slackware has been getting a bit bloated IMO, and definetly not ubuntu).

My server computer is only a pentium 4 with like 700 mb of ram. Enough for a server that gets light to mid trafffice but if the site becomes popular (which i doubt), ill have to find a webhosting company.

[Dy7SLyTq]

why not ubuntu? its just a terminal and very lite + it allows for a lot of server install at setup

[katokato]

Hmm i dont know. I just prefer slackware since ive used it before. But thats not really important ATM. I need to learn a web development language that suits my needs.

[ModShop]

If you're looking to parse a file on the server you'll want to use PHP (or some other server-side language) that runs on the server ;p PHP is an interpreted language with C like syntax that you can embed directly in an HTML file to dynamically generate your Javascript (that does the quiz itself in the clients browser) and some of the HTML (i.e. the actual questions/pictures). You use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to make your web page pretty. Style sheets allow you to easily change visual attributes like positioning, size and color of parts of your page. Just Google around for HTML, CSS, Javascript and PHP examples/tutorials. Getting the basics down is... basic enough.