Ask HN: How does a 1990s web developer get back on track?

"Frameworks" are definitely the word to describe what has changed since you left us and you've certainly mentioned a few, but the way websites are pieced together is largely the same. A bit of dynamic code sharts out some HTML and that gets rendered with some CSS (and occasionally some JS).

I'd leave the backend stuff well alone to start if I were you. If the last browsers you were testing against were really Netscape and IE4, I'd strongly suggest you start with the design side of things. Bootstrap is a great framework for writing little CSS and reaping a many-device-compatible site. There are alternatives like Materialize.

So build a one-page static website and see how that all fits together. Change the design. Consider digging into the CSS (or LESS/SASS CSS-generator languages). You can do a lot with static sites. There are even form-handling third parties to take out the hard stuff.

Once you're on top of that, you're in a good spot to go dynamic; learn database modelling, templating, URL dispatchers and all the jazz that is specific to the backend framework of your choice.

Don't feel pressurised to stay with PHP. You haven't used it in years and I'd argue it's everybody's favourite punch-bag for a reason. The quality of tutorials is much better these days so picking up something like Django or Rails without prior Python or Ruby experience is easy. But don't try to master them all at once.

The best way to learn is to dig in and build.

(For anyone who doesn't know this: You're still forced to do email templates with tables becaus of Outlook)

From what I've seen recently, RoR work seems to have decent pay when doing it remotely, compared to PHP. Perhaps less competition on price from developing countries?

I intend to learn RoR in the nearby future as well, since I'd like to do more remote work and less "on location" work (which I currently do as iOS dev).

>Replace: [table/tr/td] with [div/ul/li] ... CSS3 box model ... up-to-date. No lie //

You really do need some responsive design, particularly if you care about UX and SERP rankings.

Seeing as you know PHP try the Laravel framework (disclaimer: I've never used it but have heard that it's very rails like and I use rails daily because it's very fast and easy to get started with). Use bootstrap for your CSS needs (layout etc is too simple to be true and it will save you a ton of time) and once you have the bones of functionality you want start exploring JS tools for adding a slicker user experience.

If you want to look at something new I can highly recommend the Rails Tutorial by Hartl to bring you up to speed on the basics of web dev with rails, bootstrap and ajax. It also teaches you a bit of git which is a must.

https://www.railstutorial.org/book