Before you start to do web development, either for a hobby or for your start up project, you should be prepared for learning many different technologies including both front end and back end. You may need to deal with UI design, business logic design, data store and infrastructure setup etc. This seems a very complex. Indeed, if you know where you should go, the it's actually not so hard.
Here are some sites you should go when you face issues while you are doing web development. These sites are not language specific, they will not cover only one specific web programming language, instead they focus more about issues you may encounter and solutions you can find.
Where to go?
- StackOverflow when you have a specific programming query
- Quora when you have architectural design like doubts
- SmashingMagazine when you want to get inspiration from other awesome sites and see good design tutorials + free resources
- Mozilla Developer Network when you are looking for documentation and tough tutorials on coding
- WebPlatform is like MDN but cleaner and better and younger. It may be too young at the moment and may lack some information but it will grow and become one of the best platforms for documentation and tutorials.
- Hacker News when you just want to see great people talk and not disturb them. Oh and this is one place where you also get the best start up information with detailed reviews and what not. Quality of discussion is so frigging awesome that you just don't want to ruin it by adding mediocre thoughts to it.
- Dochub.io when you need to know what parameters that function takes or other similar documentation. MDN is slower for these queries.
- SitePoint provides cutting-edge content for web professionals — developers, designers, programmers, freelancers and site owners.
- Google / DuckDuckGo - Google, you know is great. DDG is awesome for programming related queries. It gives answers right then and there.
Where not to go?
- w3schools - While they are always the top on Google Search they have an outdated site. They might have good resources for some of the technologies but it will be hard for a reader to know when to trust it and when he/she shouldn't.
- Reddit - You will not be able to distinguish when you are being trolled and when the person is actually helping you out. There are decent subreddits like programming and web_design. If you can handle reddit it's great - it just takes a lot more effort than many other sources.
- Any site that doesn't look like it was made in last decade. Quick quality check:
- All the code should be in perfect formatting
- All the code should be brilliantly highlighted
- The paragraphs should be well formatted and content should look neat overall
- Too many links on the page, go away
- Too many banner ads on the page, go away
If you want to learn a specific language like PHP, the best way is to go to its official website and check out the documentations. You should also check the forums related to them as well.
