I’ve been looking into porting my AMB Design Spreadsheet to a web app of sorts for easier access and sharing. I can handle the programming for all of the engineering calculation bits myself (in javascript or most other languages). Unfortunately, my knowledge of web development ends in the early 2000s with static html and maybe some jQuery. I’m hoping there’s someone more knowledgeable who’d be willing to help me with the web-y parts so the finished product ends up usable.
If you’re interested, feel free to write here or send me a PM. Thanks
You can still get pretty far with basic html and a bit of javascript. I’ve meddled with React and its cousins a bit but for my recent projects I’ve found the overhead for setting those up to be a bit overkill. For turning a meh-looking form/sheet into a nicer one, Bootstrap has a boatload of css classes for almost anything you can imagine.
We are currently rebuilding our entire website in PHP, with a bit of jQuery for the fancy things. PHP may be really old, but still supported everywhere and has endless documentation because it’s about as old as time itself. I’d encourage you to look into it if you want to add in some logic to your website.
React or Angular are great as well if you prefer JavaScript or using a modern framework. I’d completely avoid something like Vue, they are the newest of the common js frameworks, so documentation can be spotty. I also think it is less popular in general, which doesn’t help.
Use Bootstrap for your CSS. Yes it looks “bad”, but that’s because everyone uses it…because it’s simple and works.
Edit: MySQL or MariaDB for data storage as well…or JSON if that’s what you prefer. But 177 is using PHP + MySQL since that’s a classic combo with infinite documentation. Makes it easy to teach.
10/10 agree with using Bootstrap. 0/10 agree that it looks bad.
You can get a site up and running with Bootstrap in literally 5 minutes if you know basic HTML. Put a few hours into it and you’re well on your way to a custom design.
For project and personal websites, I tend to prefer a simple look with Bootstrap to something custom designed anyways. It’s familiar, clean, easy to use, and stays up to date.
