[gaara]

Since I am building a (hopefully) large website with a few others, I'd like to be able to learn and utilize advanced programming language. I'm already pretty fluent in HTML and Visual Basic, and know a bit about flash, but apart from that, I'm clueless.

I'm leaning towards PHP and possibly javascript, but I'm wondering what would be the best programming language to learn for webmastering.

[Emily]

Learn PHP... You can do pretty much anything with it and it's not too hard to learn. There are a ton of PHP resources in this thread

[Nobin]

just learn php it's the best for a website

[fitzjj]

again php. Of course you need to know the HTML to render the page, but for all of the cleverness i'd deffinately reccomend php.

Make sure your server supports php first though!!! And be aware that the actual way in which it works can vary (can be run in safe mode etc...).

JavaScript can be very clever but my problem with it is that it is client side and so you are dependant on the client having a javaScript enabled browser and having it turned on. With php because it is serverside as long as your webserver supports it then it'll work for everyone

[Arcane]

PHP for the win. I'm currently trying to learn it myself and I haven't found it too difficult to grasp.

[M4A1]

PHP!

[rico ege]

php fpr linux based asp/asp.net for windows based servers

[Louis12]

I advice you to learn two languages...one being a clientside language and the other being the severside language.

For the clientside language, I recommend Javascript.

For the severside language, I recommend PHP.

The reason why I recommend learning two languages is because in a common scenario you would want a user to submit a form. You could use Javascript to check that the form is complete, before you make a request to the sever to process the form.

[kerriganm]

Yeah, I'd say PHP and JavaScript both.

[SkyHi]

I'd learn PHP first, though.

-SkyHi