The light at the end of the tunnel is sometimes said to be the headlamp of an oncoming train.
I have managed to get managed to get various basics working like the MySQL database, an Apache webserver on my laptop and a working web page published on a hosting website to test my web efforts live. Not on an unsuspecting public though.
I use the laptop to develop my code, test it on the local Apache webserver and eventually load it to the live website, publishing the pages a few folders below the public face of the root page so I know where it is for testing, but where Joe Public hopefully doesn’t know they exist. A live website really tests whether you’ve got your code right – something might work locally because you might have buggered around with default settings , but you can guarantee a live site, with a background database will show up any coding errors.
The live site I use is www.iserve.co.nz which costs me NZD$20 a month and has a great interface. Support Kiwi made! There are any number of sites, I just picked one after Googling ‘free hosting nz’. Some options were did I want a PHP / MySQL interface or an ASP / SQL . PHP / MySQL was the option I wanted, both are free downloads for me to use on my laptop and I also wanted to learn PHP.
All have been part of the learning curve, keeping my brain active instead of mindless surfing some of the dross on the Net, but sometimes I definitely wonder about that bright light…
