what language do I need to make a website? |
HTML, and thats all.
Hosting it is another story. I made this site the other day:
http://www.thegoldenlog.droppages.com
It is a static page, just HTML and CSS. The hosting is done by Drop Pages, which accesses file I have on my Drop Box account. It is the easiest way to get something on the real internet ( and free ).
The internet, in a nutshell, is requests for information from databases. Your computer sends an HTTP request to a server, the server routes the request into a back end, and the back end queries a database for the information you requested. The back end then formats the database query and responds to your computer in HTML.
There's many languages for the back end, PHP, Ruby, C, theres even Javascript back ends.
There's many types of databases, but typically you will use SQL.
This is a Ruby on Rails application:
http://sqlexample.herokuapp.com
When you go to the site, your are presented will all of the information in the database. The form at the top changes the content of the HTTP request you send to the app ( the address bar will show you the parameters you sent ).
The first line of the orange box is the way you talk to the database using Ruby on Rails. The second line is the actual SQL query that gets created.
( we used bootstrap for styling that site ).
Javascript is the language of the future for web pages. Home computers are powerful enough at this point to maintain entire MVC frameworks on client side. Backends no longer have to respond with HTML, they can respond in JSON format. This means less work for your server.
Travis uses Ember for a client side MVC:
https://travis-ci.org/
Btw, the SQL example site I linked to is hosted on heroku.com. Heroku is free hosting for RoR, NodeJS, or PHP sites ( and perhaps others too ).