Need Help with Design

[steveestewart]

Hey guys,

I'm new to web design (been learning for about 3-4 months now) and have minimal experience. However, I'm in the process of building a site that I can't seem to find any info on.

I'm wanting to put together a user-generated content site (is that the proper name for what I'm doing?) much like http://www.fmylife.com/. I just want a simple layout. Nothing fancy, to start with, but something I can have people submit content and it show up in a blog type manner. I want to get it going and than improve it as I learn and my web designer friends get more free time (I'd ask them for help, but hate running to them with every question I have for fear of being annoying).

So, is there some sort of site with templates for this sort of thing or a good tutorial I can use to figure it out? Any help in the right direction would be appreciated!

[Chris]

A user generated content site is going to require you to become adept at server side programming with a language such as PHP. The design can be done later, you won't be able to do a functional site unless you learn good programming. Not just the basics either, because you will need things like spam and abuse filters.

Your othero ption would be to take an existing platform and modify it.

[rligeza]

Check out wordpress (http://en.wordpress.com/features/). The templates on the site can start as your base, and then add widgets and add ons from there.

Other than that, you will need PHP and MySql.

[seattleseo]

With your limited knowledge, I would recommend going with a Ning network.

Fast to deploy, and not a whole lot to learn.