Please help, haven't got a clue

Hey guys

I dont know where to begin, Im after designing a website where visitors can sign up and create there own profile (including an image). I would also like for the members to be able to search for other members using keywords, location etc.

Can anyone please let me know what I need to learn to be able to create this website, and roughly how to go about doing it. Please bare in mind that I have never touched databases before apart from access. (non web related work though).

Thank you very much

Sean

The basic "easiest" (and perhaps most widely spread for smaller operations) coding for this kind of database operability is php/mysql. The database part is pretty easy, the php part takes some learning. I started with Larry Ullman's "PHP and MYSQL for Dynamic Websites", which is quite gentle on the beginner. You'd be able to do the pages you mentioned just from finishing that book.

I'm suspecting that you might get this as a side program to some prepackaged forum software, possibly for free. However, if you want the information available to other pages, you might as well start from scratch.

Thanks alot for the help, I'll look into it now

Sean