[berty6294]

Hi all, I've spent some time trying to create an inventory tracking program for my parent's small business (for free of course) and would love some pointers in my next direction.

I started by using Excel Survey's and it has worked well but I very limited so I would like to take the next step to ensure I'm able to have full control.

I would like to develop a web application to allow users to sign in and out certain items. I am fluent in C#, Java, and Python, and would like to know where I should start in web development. What language/software should I use? How should I go about hosting the app? Anything I should know before I start my self teaching? This is completely foreign to me, but I am a quick learner and any/every pointer you guys give will mean a lot to me!

Thanks!

[Pete]

Buy a copy of Dummies Guide to ASP.Net. That'll get you on the right road. It'll most probably list a bunch of web sites that offer exposed web services that you can consume and play with.

Armed with experience of that, you should be better placed to explore and learn further.

[berty6294]

Ahh thank you! I'll see if I can find it at my school bookstore or library!

[Pete]

You may need to get it from Amazon/high street bookstore.

There's most probably going to be a lot of tutorials on the web for this kind of thing, but I'm old and crusty in preferring to have a good read of something before I get my hands dirty (a lot easier to look at a table of contents/index and flip between pages than it is on web sites).

I've used Dummies books before and they've always been clear and helpful without being too patronising.

You can probably Google for ASP.Net tutorials if you like...

[berty6294]

Okay so that will teach me ASP. NET, curious though, what will I need to publish this? Host? Domain? Server? I don't know what these things are lol. Now my parents already have a website, could I embed this in to any site? Or only certain types?

[Pete]

Yes, you'd need to publish the code to the web server inside the IIS structure. Personally, I don't know the implications when you're renting web space, it would be something that the provider should be able to answer.

When I've written ASP.Net applications, I've been in a corporate network and can access the web servers directly.

However, you may be able to use localhost to develop/test on your own machine.

Take a stab at

Local IIS Web Sites

You've probably found with your C# development, the more you know, the more effectively you can use Google to learn even more.

[berty6294]

Yeah haha, the programming I'm not worried about. BING will help me if I'm stuck. Just the whole getting started thing was overwhelming (and you have helped plenty there)!

[Pete]

Hopefully, your machine has the prerequisites to start developing your web apps locally.

The great thing is that you can use this web knowledge to greatly enhance your Windows Phone development (use the phone for client tasks, the web for data manipulation).

Good luck with it, it's great to see kids like you getting excited about development.

[berty6294]

I'm not able to use the Windows Phone emulator... is the same thing (I forgot what its called) going to prevent me from locally developing for the web?

[Pete]

No idea, sorry. You might get some answers by posting in the developers corner. I expect the guys in there may well have experience of creating local web services to test their WP8 apps.

[berty6294]

Ahh okay. Thanks again for your help! It is very much appreciated!