Complete noob creating a secure web database for students and teachers at a small private pre-K/kindergarten?

Question

I'm starting a project for a small private pre-K/kindergarten school (owned by my wife's family), and I'm wondering if there's a better way to do this than starting from scratch. Perhaps someone can point me in a good direction before I spin my wheels too much.

The main reason I took this on is to learn about the process, so if anyone is suggesting I get started in Rails or something, I'm quite happy to do that, but on the other hand if there's something out of the box out there that's in the ballpark similar to Wordpress, it might be better to go with what works before getting in over my head.

I'm not a complete noob in that I understand the basics of databse normalization and I'm quite proficient with VBA, and I'm hoping to come away from this with more knowledge about web applications and having done something useful for the school. Can anyone help me get started with this (admittedly very vaguely described) project?

Thanks for your time!

Answer 1

You could try web2py. I used it for developing a small web application and it proved quick and relatively easy. It follows the MVC (model view controller) paradigm and offers good database support. It is based on Python, so it is easy enough to get started if you're new to programming at all.