There’s no two ways about it; putting together a website is hard! You need to know a myriad of programming languages (HTML, PHP, CSS, AJAX, Javascript, MySQL, just to name a few). You also must understand how to combine these tools into one cohesive whole, which is hopefully more than the sum of its parts. These days, we use frameworks, boilerplates and generators, but do you actually – when you get right down to it – know how to build a website from scratch?
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This tutorial is meant for those who can write a PHP function, know what jQuery is, can handle their CSS well, but would like some insider info on how a web service is built from scratch. How should I organize my files, where should I keep my functions, how should I start planning the thing, how should I connect to the database, how should I handle AJAX calls and how should I manage my 404 pages are just some of the questions I try to shed some light on here.
Introduction
The service we will be creating is called Bonsai Writer, a tool which will convert plain text into HTML. It is aimed mostly at writers but it can also be used as a note stash for more general use.
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