Creating a membership site

Hello im a complete novice but hope and desire to make a membership website, where users can log in and have there own profile and can send each other messages.

Does anyone have any advice??

You could learn PHP an build this yourself (PHP Recources for Beginners)
Otherwise you can leech off of a script someone else has made but have little control over it and if you have problems will not know what to do!

Depending on what your looking for there are pre-made packages you can use. Droople, Joomla(I think its one...), PHPBB, and all sorts of others. Like Alex mentioned, you will eventually hit a brick wall using these packages, and you'll never actually have full control over the site. I'm currently working on my own library with tons of PHP Widgets where I can use them over and over again on multiple sites.

What will you need to learn in order to accomplish your goal?

Basic PHP knowledge (as posted by Alex).
Query String Knowledge
Basic Database Knowledge
Basic SQL knowledge

With those 4 basics you can begin your membership site.

Here are some resources for learning MySQL also (http://www.webforumz.com/mysql/60511...-resources.htm)

or if you think in ASP like me, Check out this tutorial by me

Can't forget (X)HTML/CSS!

Also, try taking a look at this months Newsletter. There's a good tutorial for this sort of thing...