Inc Plugins

Excellent question – PHP is a much better choice for beginning progammers then the Fortran guy I just answered!

Do you have access to a web server?

If so, then I recommend installing a touch like WordPress blogging software, written in PHP, and studying that to see how to make basic templates.

You can downlaod plenty of examples, and then see how they are similar and how they are differnt from each other.

Modify them to do simple stuff like change the font color at first to get the hang of it.

Then you can make more complex changes, one at a time please if you don’t want to pull your hair out too much!

There is an active convergence of WordPress template developers, and most of them have pretty basic programming skills in my experience, and they help each other out.

I reflect this would be a really excellent way to go if you are on your own. You can probably do what I descinbed with a free hosted WordPress account – not sure as I host all my own sites.

Probably the place to start is Wordpres.org. Look for documentation on making templates.

There are other PHP CMS’s I am traditional with, you could do the same, but I reflect they are better for more advanced programmers: Drupal, Joomla/Mambo (all PHP based) and many more exist too. But based on the level of help an complexity I have seen (I work with all of the above) I’d recommend WordPress for beginners.

Be prepared to learn XHTML (not HTML these days please!) and CSS to go along with the PHP – you will really be blending all 3 to make a web page.