Trying to create a site where users upload their own content

I would use PHP. This is a good place to start http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_file_upload.asp

Start with uploading images and go from there.

@John- Please don't link to W3Schools they are not a reliable source of information and in no way affiliated with the W3C.

Hey Beau,

We've talked quite a bit about where to start learning server-side programming on this forum and other places. If you want to learn how to make web stuff with server-side programming, you should start with PHP. (I'll add a couple of links to some of the other threads shortly.)

However, I do think that this project might be a bit much for starting out. :~) I would probably recommend that you use a backend-as-a-service provider like Parse for this. They handle user authentication and data/file storage through an API using a JavaScript SDK or a simple REST API. Integrating with them will teach you all kinds of valuable skills about integrating with APIs, and they'll handle a lot of the security issues around user authentication and file uploads. It will be challenging and you'll learn a lot, but there's a good chance that this is not too much to try to learn.

If you are really keen to learn server-side programming, I'd recommend going through my PHP course to get a really good foundation in how forms and web servers interact. We have three PHP courses planned in the series, and I'm working on the second course now.

Here are some of the threads I mentioned:

• What language should I learn?
• Why {do people think} PHP sucks?

@Randy - That was a round up. +1

Also Parse looks pretty intresting

Thanks Randy. Parse looks great, but I'm doing this for a local non-profit who has very little money to spare. (This would require more than 1GB of storage as users would be uploading videos).

I'll go through your PHP course and may decide to scale down the website. Also, would love a full course on API. I think it's covered some in the iPhone app course, but full course on it would be awesome. Just sayin' :-)

@Beau - Codecadmey has a course on using the Parse API with JavaScript

Thanks James. I don't remember seeing that last time I was there. I guess it's new. I appreciate it. I'll check it out.

Instead of having the users upload the videos directly to your database, its much easier to upload them to YouTube and then embed the videos on the website