Ask HN: Had an original idea for a start-up...but

Hi, long time reader (I always save it to last when I'm reading through all my RSS feeds because it's my favourite), but first time poster. I am an eighteen year old Australian guy halfway through my first year of university, I am studying a bachelor of IT and Systems with a major in security (thinking of changing that, will see what happens). Because of my fairly poor background and current tight budget (university -> eep.) I have become a very resourceful person with allot of time on my hands (can't afford to go out now much can I). Usually I spend it reading all sorts of ebooks and papers and trying to learn new skills.

I have always admired the people I read about on HN talking about their start-ups and ventures into exciting projects and business. Last night I had a fantastic idea, something I really believe would be worth my time to give it a shot, but I am totally inexperienced. It might be childish but I would rather not go into detail about my idea, just know it combines some e-commerce with some social networking concepts. I want to code the site using PHP and a bit of Java-script, but my skills with these are not exactly up to the job yet.

So I ask you HN, will you point me to-wards what you believe to be the best of the best resources for: PHP, Java-script, web hosting, texts on starting your first project, and e-commerce

I would also welcome any and all input from you guys, don't feel like you have to play nice, I am very open to you poking holes and learning about how the "real world" actually works.

Thanks for reading this.

Sitepoint.com is aimed pretty squarely at the group you're in, and covers pretty much everything you'll need. It's even an Australian site :)

PHP is pretty easy to get in to, I asked about js frameworks here a while ago and pretty much unanimously got jquery back so that's what I'm using myself now and so far it has been very easy to use and does what I want it to.

Build a small website or two using PHP and js before you go for your major idea, that will probably save you a rewrite later on. PHP is a strange platform to develop for, the language has its shortcomings which makes it very easy to make a mess of things but with some discipline and a good plan on how you intend to separate your business logic from your presentation layer you should come out well.

Have a look at templating as well, no point in reinventing the wheel there, at least not until high performance becomes a real issue (using a templating engine adds some overhead).

good luck !

And about keeping the idea secret: Before you execute do some really good searching around to see if it isn't already out there, also not sharing your idea with other - not neccesarily the HN crowd but in general - is an excellent way to get into 'island mode'. Get early feedback that way you can tweak your idea while it is still just pencil sketches. Later on that gets a lot more expensive.

Javascript: Start with Douglas Crockfords "Javascript: The Good Parts". Excellent, terse primer on safe Javascript development.

Startups: Read content by people like Peter Graham, Joel Spolsky, Rob Walling, Guy Kawasaki, Bob Walsh, Andy Brice - just to mention a few of my personal faves. Skim around, there's lots of great free content out there on software startups!

I think the best way to learn this is to get into a framework and start hacking with it. Go through the tutorials and re-develop what was done in them. Then develop a small appliaction just for you. Maybe it could catalogue movies if your a collector, or document your exercises etc. Just something that would be useful and a learning experience.

Then do the same thing with Javascript. Look at some tutorials. Re-develop them. Experiment with cool animations, ajax requests, things like that.

The frameworks I recommend are Kohana (www.kohanaphp.com) and CodeIgniter(www.codeigniter.com) for PHP.

And like most other people, I LOVE jQuery. (www.jquery). Feel free to email me (its in my profile) if you have any questions. I'd be glad to help.

You definitely WILL be surprised at how fast you can pick these frameworks up.