analysis of website setup/structure/mechanics

[roccosiffredi]

Hello all!

i hope someone can help me with this...

basically i need to know the setup of these online social networking sites for example myspace.com and faceparty.com

lets focus on faceparty.com for example...

ive looked at the source code and i see .asp and .jsp

i need to know from top to bottom what is the structure in a sort of flowchart format in order of events/steps/sequence and what is doing what in each step e.g

1.person --> faceparty.com homepage (html,jsp,asp) --> 2.person selecting age,sex,location (jsp,asp) --> 3. site searches for selected categories (MySql,Oracle,access,IIS6.0,ASP,ASP.net,PHP etc)

i know its a little strange but its the only way i will understand the mechanics of such sites and i dont think i am naturally gifted at things like programming etc. ( i dont really know what PHP/ASP etc are really neccessary for and what their purpose is in such sites)

any help or pointers in the right direction will be greatly appreciated as im having trouble sleeping because of this !

[ronaldb66]

I think you're focussing on specific technologies too much; I think you'd understand the mechanics of such applications more easily if you look at them on a more conceptual level first.

Server side scripts written in scripting languages like PHP, ASP, JSP, etc. offer the power to perform tasks typically performed by programs: retrieving, processing and storing information, responding to user actions, etc.
The main difference is that scripts can be embedded into web pages, and that they are executed at the moment the page in question is requested.

This makes scripts very suitable to dynamically generate pages with information culled from a database, but also makes web based applications possible; these are the core concepts that power not only social networking sites, but also content management systems, e-commerce sites, etc.

PHP is one of the more commonly used languages for personal and small business sites; this simple tutorial (http://nl3.php.net/tut.php) offers a nice introduction into what is possible with server side scripting.