I don't know if it's possible to get a good answer to this but: if you learned how to make websites with, like, users who can login and do things where the website stores stuff in a database, without doing it as a job, how did you do it?

I feel like in principle I know all of the basic pieces (HTTP, HTML, CSS, SQL, CORS, various programming languages, etc), but also somehow it still feels extremely hard to me

(no more replies please there are enough)

@b0rk I bought a PHP book I saw at Barnes & Noble, and worked through it end-to-end, drawing from php.net as I went.

https://www.amazon.com/PHP-MySQL-Web-Development-Second/dp/067232525X

Then a webcomic artist friend asked me to write a website for them!

Amazon.com