Building a website like twitter

[amitashr]

Hi, I am a complete beginner to web development and I want to learn enough to build a website like twitter. Well not so flashy as twitter but just a few of it's features. I need people to be able to create accounts and log in. Then my website should show them just a single page with a simple, twitter like timeline which updates in real time and prints the users tweets. I do NOT want to use tools available online to build this website.. I want to learn the basics from the start and work my way up to building a site like twitter. I will also need some database to store data extracted from the site. I am a complete beginner and I don't even know HTML. Please suggest all the tools I require to master in order to build such a website.

[PlecPicker]

well i dont know if i'm anywhere near skilled enough to attempt this, but u will need to learn:

probibly AJAX
defiantly SQL
defiantly PHP
defiantly Javascript, HTML and CSS
...

I hope this isn't an urgent project.

I recommend http://www.w3schools.com
as a good site to start learning all these languages.

[amitashr]

Not an urgent project at all.. Just learning.. Thanks for the advice.. I have heard a lot about jQuery on the internet.. Is that required too?

[PlecPicker]

Yes, jquery is used with ajax,

I dont know much about jquery and ajax except that i need to learn them and implement them into my site.

They are used to make pages more dynamic, allowing you to update information without refreshing or updating the whole page.

I really want to implement this into my site somehow too

[jedaisoul]

The basics of web pages are HTML and CSS. You need to learn them first. Then I suggest you learn PHP/MySQL, or a similar server language to support the database. Last, and definitely least, you may need to learn JavaScript and Jquery to tart up the site. I strongly recommend you avoid getting drawn into the prettification of the web pages before you have got the structure right.

One point that occurs to me is that, if you are writing a Twitter clone, will smartphone users be important to you? If so you need to structure the site right to work on a wide range of screen resolutions. That is an art in itself. A classic fixed-width site will not do!

[stephen011]

Before start a website like twitter. You should have clear knowledge of data base.

[adumpaul]

You need to know basic knowledge of html, php, CSS, javascript, SQL, Dreamweaver, Photoshop etc.

[spufi]

Dreamweaver, Photoshop etc.

You don't need Dreamweaver at all. Photoshop isn't required either although the more likely of the two one would use.