Beginner Help- Urgent

Dear All,

I hope, that I am the right place to ask website related questions.... I am a beginner but willing to learn and develop my skills of website designing. I have a goal but I do not know where to start from.
I would like to design a website like
www.facebook.com
www.orkut.com
www.hi5.com

My questions are:

Where should I start ?
What do I need to learn ( SQL etc etc ) from start till end ?
How much server space do I need to host such a website ?
Assuming I can learn fast how much work is involved to create a website like this ?
I would appreciate any kind of help in this matter.
Thanks and best regards,

Samad Ilyas

Assuming you already know (x)HTML/CSS;
PHP Resouces
Personally I think it would be a waste of time for you,
there are some many, why would everyone just decide to use yours? (Don't mean to put you down, just don't want you to waste your time).

Hey,

Thanks for the quick response...... and yes you are damm on the money when you said there are so many in the market y wud sumeone use mine...... well in the process of making this website i will burn few 1000s but it will get me on track to explore and be more creative in many ways ..........Once I have learned what I need it is not nessecary that I have to stick to same concept I can put this knowledge to another use.....

so it is X-html, CSS, and PHP and mySQL for online database right ?...... that should keep me busy for another million years .....................

Hi Samad - yes, HTML and CSS first. If you need help with learning those, then check out the sticky threads in the beginner resources. Then learn the database side after that.

It might all seem very daunting, but you don't have to learn everything in order to get started, learn the basics and then learn the other bits as you need them - and remember if you have a question, you can be sure someone at Webforumz will have the answer!

If you want a quick learning process, go for video tutorial. More on CMS - content management system. They will teach you how to build your own website from a to z. That will make your "million years" into.. maybe 6 month...

Good luck.

I am so glad that I registered to this Web help forum........ soooooo, as I mentioned earlier I am very new to web designing
( <<----ME )..........

I am looking into all your suggestions now....... reading and researching to determine what suits my needs at this point in time and then will get back to u will be needing your help ....... please pleaseeeeeeee

HTML and CSS is VERY important

Get started here:

Getting started with HTML
More Advanced Features
http://www.htmldog.com/guides/
Bulletproof HTML: 37 Steps to Perfect Markup

And the mother of all resources ... straight from the horses' mouth
HTML 4.01 Specification

Also ... have a look at the stickies in the HTML and CSS forum, the Beginners' section has some great threads and our newsletter.

See this thread for some great books on CSS
Resources for learning how to use CSS for layout

Then PHP and MySQL ... you'll want to learn Ajax as well to make it soooo web 2.0

Maybe even Ruby for applications.