[butwhy]

Good points. And I'm at the point where I can create a site in html/css and bootstrap, but want to start populating the data with dynamic content and interaction with a database etc. Do you think javascript would be a good thing for me to focus on now to achieve those things?

I guess I had plans to look into javascript at some point, but it was primarily going to be for traditional ui manipulation. Do you think it can totally replace what I was going to originally do with php/django?