I was asked by a good friend for information on what to do to get into web development as a hobby. I decided to share it with everyone in terms of how I do things. I must note that I didn't get into details because she is a developer by trade and is probably far better at "getting it" than I am. So here you are. Take it for what it is, my view of what I use for my own personal web development.

There are several different things you can use depending on how involved you want to be. There are a ton of free PHP Portals out there that you could customize and what not with a boat load of modules that people have developed. I have tried Joomla, Mambo, Drupal and decided that what I really want to do is write so I have chosen WordPress as my choice of PHP Portals.

They are really self explanatory in terms of setting them up and generally all you need is:

1. A host for your Site

   Commercial Host I use http://Powweb.com Self Host Using Dynamic DNS you can use your machine at home to host your own site http://www.dyndns.com/ But, you have to have a router that you can tell to use it for routing purposes

2. A Domain Name I think at this point in time you really don't need to be told how to get one of these.
3. An FTP Client I use Cyberduck which is free.
4. A Web Editor I use everything from a simple text editor since it is mostly code in PHP
5. A CSS Tool I use CSS Edit which is an amazing CSS Editor that allows you to view various CSS code in a Preview mode that outlines the "Zones" with a function called X-Ray which is a complete live/time-saver for layout, design, color schemes etc. Again, you don't have to have one but it is fun to customize some of the templates you can get with the above portals.
6. Image Editor If you want to use images, there are a couple of options. Of course Photoshop, but ouch the cost. There is Pixelmator which I just bought last night for $60 however in retrospect I should have just gone with the OpenSource GIMP for Mac.
7. Finally if all of the above is too much and you want it all-in-one, there is CODA which I really want to get my hands on and combines the best of most of the above into one package.