web interface

[r a]

Hello,

I am pretty new to all this. I have database design experience with MS Access, but this is my first mySQL db. I also have some coding experience, and am currently most comfortable with Python.

My end goal is to create a browser-based interactive fiction/game thing. Right now I have a mySQL db structure and some Python code. My code is currently just using dummy data rather than pulling in data from the db, but I think/hope it won't be too big of a deal to interact with the db through Python. (Hope I'm not tempting the coding gods by saying that.)

My main problem right now is how to do the browser interface. I don't know much about web architecture, unfortunately. I think I need some kind of CGI thing?

What I would really like is to find a GUI tool to design the interface that would have customizable templates or drag-and-drop elements or something, so I wouldn't have to code much by hand. Something easy, if such a tool exists.

Also would prefer something that I would be able to install/use without having that much access to the server where the site will be hosted (on a university server that I don't have control over). I don't fully understand how a lot of the tools I have been looking at work, but it seems like they're often things where you'd have to get an administrator to do stuff on the server (is that right?), which I would rather avoid.

It does look like Django has some sort of standalone implementation, but I'm not clear on how that would work or how much of a learning curve there would be for using it.

If anyone has any thoughts or suggestions, I would really appreciate it.

Hope my questions make sense. I don't really know what I'm doing, so could be they're kind of silly. I apologize if that's the case, and please let me know if you need any additional informmation.

Thanks,
Shel