Hey I am new to all this cool programming stuff. Thought I'd show you what I have done in the past with some HTML and &#106avascript. <A href="http://www.mmor.4t.com">MMoR Guild Website</A> Please tell me what you think! I am going to learn PhP next I think. Should I learn CSS and &#106avascript and be fluent in it before PhP, or not?

Well..... it's a little silly looking. You know, yet another orange-on-black site design with a lens-flared glowing logo trying to be l33t. But I guess you kind of have to expect that with a guild website; it's just RPing. [smile] CSS and &#106avascript are client-side technologies, so you don't really need them for PHP. It all depends on what you're trying to accomplish.

Yes, the colors are that way not because thats how we chose to put them. On the back of our cape in game the colors are red, orange, and gold.

I am trying to accomplish a website that doesn't look like it was made with HTML.

If you don't mean 'know it back and front', then what do you mean?

Ah. Yes. I am planning on learning that now. I am also trying to do some extremely basic scripting in GML. I have this game, and I have it invisioned very nicely. If it turns out like I am seeing it it should be very cool.

Sorry that this is a long post so don't get overwhelmed or anything hehe. What kind of things do you want to use PHP for?

If it is to make a content management system, I would recommend that before you learn PHP, you keep with perfecting your HTML skills until you are able to make a sharp, clean-cut layout that is nice to the eyes. ^^ This is because the user will still be driven away by the layout, and it doesn't matter to them what backend the site sits on because they can't see it.

If you want interactivity, you should still go for the perfecting your HTML skills, heh. I notice you didn't use any tables (with more than one cell at least) on the site you are using as an example, so you may want to try working out how to make your tables. :) Those are some of the most important things in HTML (at least until you are quite good with css!). Things such as forums and comments, etc will most likely need to be outputted into tables to keep the organization!

As far as "perfecting your HTML skills" goes... The most important thing is the look and organization of the site, because websites are either for presentation, interaction, or both. My site isn't the best example but you can check www.talonz.com to see what I mean. You've got your header area, content area, and navigation area clearly defined. The navigation area is organized in such a way that it is not very hard to find what you are looking for. And the layout looks nice at least in my opinion (and unique), lol.

A site that could benefit from PHP would be a game reference site (apedia.talonz.com if you want to use mine as an example). The organization is prime here. The data needs to be easily accessible, and organized in a way that is very useful when comparing things. A weapons page would need a large table that contains the weapons stats, and you could use PHP to populate a table from the backend so you wouldn't have to do it yourself all the time. Unfortunately that is not the case for my site there. :p But that site relies on organization very much, and could use a content management system for adding the weapons (but I don't work on that site anymore so it's not needed).

Of course if you want a non-HTML looking page, go with either flash as DuFace suggested, or learn css and learn to make very nice images - and then use absolute/relative positioning and use positioned text boxes for your content as well. I find that a little messy but I guess it's an option, hehe. :)

Thanks for the complements, and the suggestions too. When I said I wanted it to look non HTML-ish, I meant in a layout so that it looks cool. Example: www.aimutation.com

Can you do that with HTML? When you try to put stuff next to each other it always includes a space, no matter how much you tell it not to. I want to fit pictures together so that I can have a better looking layout of the site.