Building Web Sites for Profit and Fun – Relevant References

The great paradox of the internet is information. The internet provides such a vast array of information that just about anyone can learn just about anything about just about any subject. On the other hand, without near infinite time to weed through it all, it becomes increasingly difficult to find reliable, pertinent, and quality information. The sheer volume has become both the benefit and the draw back. And with as many tech-savvy persons as there are out there, the amount of information pertaining to web design and development is astronomical. Throughout the years, I have gathered a list of sites I have tried and tested for valuable content and who I turn to for relevant references.

MSDN Library – You can say what you want to about Microsoft, but I have found their MSDN Library very useful. Not only do they have very comprehensive documentation about windows programming, but also about HTML, CSS, and Javascript. The only catch is that it only pertains to IE, so be careful about ie-only things.

Good Tutorials – This is definitely one of the best sites for photoshop tutorials as well as many other tutorials. I use this all the time to learn more photoshop techniques as well as browse through for inspiration when I am stuck on a design.

PHP.net – If you are doing any development in php, you know this site… and if you don’t, you should. It’s the official PHP website and has the best documentation for php that I have ever seen for just about any programming languages, complete with examples and comments. They have spent a lot of time on their documentation and it shows.

CPAN – The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network and when they say comprehensive, they aren’t kidding. There are perl modules in here for just about anything you can imagine and many for things you never thought of. It’s a definite must for anyone doing any perl development at all.

Perl Documentation – And if you need help with perl syntax and commands, this is the site to goto. It has great examples and documentation, though not as good as php.net’s is for PHP, but still the best single site on the subject out there.

W3 Schools – W3 Schools is a great site for getting familiar with the basics of whatever technology you are wanting to get familiar with. It’s not so good on the intermediate or advanced aspects, but it’s really not meant to be. Great for javascript tutorials and css tutorials especially.

W3 Organization – If you want detailed, comprehensive, example-less, and often boring documentation on all things HTML, CSS, etc… here’s the site for you! It’s really useful though when you are having fine-tuning problems or fine-tweaking to do.

Lynda Tutorials – Here is a great site with a ton of video tutorials for a ton of technologies. It’s a paid site, so not free, but well worth it if you can afford it. We got it for the flash tutorials primarily but we have used it for other things as well. Definitely worth checking out.

Those are the ones I use regularly. For most other things, Google supplies me with a few sites that I can use to find specific syntax or examples that fulfill my needs. Check these sites out and get familiar the ones that will do what you need.