Who Can Use This Book

Who should read this book? All sorts of people: homeowners, office managers, stamp collectors, baristas, students, horticulturists, travelers, cooks, and genealogists you name it. This book is for you if you want to create a Web site that does more than present static pictures or text. The book is not intended for professional programmers who want to create commercial Web sites. It s also not for people who are still leery about working with the computer. Instead, it s for the many people who work with computers but haven t had the chance to learn the joys of programming a Web site. This book is for you if you meet the following criteria:

• You are comfortable working with Microsoft Windows.

• You know your way around HTML enough to be able to put together static Web pages. Maybe you ve used Microsoft FrontPage or a similar program and have modified the HTML text that those utilities produce. I ll leave a lot of the standard HTML in your hands, such as laying out your pages. Basic HTML knowledge is sufficient. If you know more HTML than that, great you ll be creating pages that are probably much better looking than mine.

• You have a little programming experience or at least a desire to learn some programming. This book, after all, is about learning to program the Web. If you ve ever created a macro in Microsoft Office or learned a little bit of Microsoft Visual Basic, you ve got all the experience you need.

• You know the basics of databases tables, columns, and so on. You don t need to be particularly experienced with databases, though. If you do happen to know SQL (a database query language), that will prove very useful. If you don t know SQL, don t worry the tools and this book will provide you with what you need to know.

Now that I ve told you what the book is about and whom it s for, let me also describe what the book is not about.