Naatkinson says:
So, I would really like to be able to help out in the web side of things, but don't know much about it. For those of you who are familiar with web design stuff, what's a good place to start learning in general, and then the same thing for GP in particular?
There are a few different approaches to this, and they depend on what you like to do. The two major routes are back end (the logic that drives the site) and front end (the visual site). Back end is more logic based programming, front end is more artistry. If you're not took een on going deep into programming, front end is lots of fun and can be practical even for your own use. For the below, I can look for some tutorials for you when I have some free time.
To start with front end dev, you need to learn HTML and CSS, the basic building blocks of a website. Plenty of good tutorials out there, but you have to be cautious, as because there's so much info, there's also a lot of outdated info. Unfortunately, even as someone in the field, it's hard to know which is which sometimes. However, even outdated info is useful.
If you're interested in GP specifically, or as a starting point, after HTML and CSS, you'll want to learn Javascript basics, and then move onto Angular, the framework that's driving the new GP site. The current site runs on a combination of PHP and AngularJS (an older version of Angular). If you want to help with the current site, you'll need to learn a lot more things, just because it's a complicated mess (thus my rewriting the site).
Because of how I learned programming (also from scratch, no classes/etc), I use pretty simple technologies, though I'm starting to get in more complex stuff. Nearly everything I use is well used online, popular, and thus has a lot of info and tutorials out there. If it's something you have a general interest in, Udemy has a number of good tutorials, and they're a cheap site ($10 for a tutorial, though that's the sale price, but the sale price comes up nearly every month; NEVER buy Udemy at full price :p). There are a ton of free tutorials if you're interested in learning but aren't sure about investing into it, which is perfectly fine, but you have to be more cautious to make sure you're learning up to date stuff.
tl;dr;
Current GP runs on:
- PHP 7.1
- AngularJS 1.5
- Some jQuery, though not much
- MySQL/MongoDB
New GP will run on:
- PHP 7.2, using the Slim Framework
- Angular (latest versions at all times)
- Unsure about DBs, either stay with MySQL/Mongo, or considering all Mongo (maybe PostgreSQL?)
- Redis
