(This is my new account as I would like to keep a low profile but people familiar with my skillset may know who am I)
I am not being ambitious. I just wanted to learn new stuffs. I am beginner in PHP but can pick up things fast. And I am OK with SQL in desktop app programming but have no experience linking to SQL from web app programmatically.
Last month, I coded a blogging site manually (and successfully). Everything at the time needs to be opened using text editor so that I could insert my blog content in the midst of HTML tags.
I propose an advanced version of this blogging site, that the PHP will generate the blog page programmatically.
I plan to have the following, but I seek your recommendations:
1) Login and Register.
How does blogging site (or simply any site with userbase) send activation link which would work?
How to implement it from scratch theoretically, and how to implement with the help of frameworks, if any?
2) Storing of user account information and blog articles
Can I store the data as a flat file instead of database table?
Is it possible the flat file would be hacked despite being encrypted using my own method? Or does MySQL database provide better protection against malicious attack?
3) Formatting of blog articles
Which one do you recommend? Use my own markdown language or use HTML markup?
4) Generating blog page programmatically
5) Generating table of content programmatically
This is where the fun begins. I have not think about it in details yet, but I hope it can be done anyway.
6) Design of user's personalized homepage
This is the most difficult part. Blogger.com, for example, allows user to drag-and-drop the UI elements up and down, and can choose to hide a particular UI element.
What I am planning is to let users choosing background image, set the title and description, and maybe choice to set time zone and delete account.
I have had good progress in web programming