building web pages

[Daz]

since liberating myself with the deletion of my primary character, i have found myself spending a lot of time studying and trying to be productive. this is good.

i have a question about web site creation, that i am asking here cuz, well, i know you guys.

i am not a noob designer, nor am i spanky, so i guess i am an intermediate builder. i am making a page for a friend as a challenge to myself, and i have 2 things that i would like input/advice/help with if anyone is familiar with the topic.

i am using frontpage, cuz i don't like the tediousness of html. i know it, but so you are aware - i am using front page 2k2. one of the pages i am building uses a cgi script to take a web based submission form, and email the contents to the guy that i am teaching to maintain the site.

what is the easiest/best way to have a that same information/content relayed BACK to the web site, and added into a table there with a generic template? i mean, like the pictures page - i can do it manually, but it would be nice to have a feature so that registered members of the site could submit the information that would be immediately relayed to both the webmaster and a page that displays all the content.

my next question is more aesthetic. i would like to incorporate some dynamic page effects into the web site, and i am wondering if flashMX is suited for the task, or if i should possibly just stick to java?

i appreciate any feedback, negative or positive, so thanks for the time taken to read my post

[Gerad]

MS frontpage contains server extensions copied directly from the book of the dead.


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Auril tells you 'Yes, we're plotting the destruction of all that is holy - and unholy, too. Just to be thorough.'

[Gindipple]

I've been researching this a little myself and things seem to be pointing at a combo of apache/php/MySQL
The editor you use probably matters the least in the end, but frontpage does seem to be the most used from some statistics I found.


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Gindipple (Gnome) stands here.

[kiryan]

i never been a fan of Front page... it used top put way too much extra crap in, maybe thats changed, i doubt it. UltraEdit *a snazzy text editor* is my favorite development environment.

when you say dynamic, are you talking about cute flashy crap or content...

input is limited to text? more than 1k characters?

what web server are you running on. Microsoft i assume? Site tied into a database / do you use/want a database?

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where ara you my rittle raabuuri

[Daz]

sorry, i stopped trolling boards for a couple days

http://cgi-bin.spaceports.com/~oghma/index.htm

thats what i have SO far, on a temporary server.

front page throw extra crap in? umm, i think you may want to look at the VAST improvements that this program has made over the years, i know html, but frontpage does a great job and letting me never have to use it. as far as page effects, silly me - i forgot dhtml, problem solved - it has all i wanted.

im going to be running with cgi initially, once this page is done, my next will use php, but i am not ready to learn something entirely new yet. i am not sure as to the extent of using databases yet. i think that i will use a cgi sendmail script to export the html forms directly to an email, so that i can avoid all kinds of icky database integrations.

ive got a friend who runs a site made entirely in php - and i am in awe of the things he has done to his site over the last year - it will hopefully go public by the end of the year - expect to receive plug!

i appreciate the feedback from you guys, thanks

[moritheil]

Errr... I get a 404 error... is there maybe a typo in that addy?

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You tell Ushug 'err... spankmistress??'
Ushug tells you 'you can't help it, I've always thought of mori as a chick'

[Daz]

odd, i did too

http://cgi-bin.spaceports.com/~oghma/index.htm

is the proper link, cut and paste from my browser, and it loads fine

[Daz]

it wont work if you click it for some reason.

cut and paste it, it works fine

[Kuurg]

This shouldn't be hard at all to do with php/MySQL.

I set up a reporting system for a company running complex queries on an MS sql database using apache/php. only had to learn a modicum of SQL to get this working (they already had established queries), and php is terribly easy to pick up.

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·•Kuurg•·

[kragt]

Apache/PHP/MySQL is the slickest combo for web development I've used yet. PHP is a very easy language to pickup, especially if you have any background in C/C++. Add to that the fact that you only have to pay for the hardware and not the OS, web server and database server and it becomes a great choice for a website. You might want to download homechicken's html libraries, I've found it is much easier to write html pages using php scripts with these libraries than writing them by hand. You can find all his libs at http://www.zend.org/search_code_author.php?author=homechicken

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Not just good, good enough.

[Daz]

hrmm, ok - im running XP on my machines. til blackcomb goes public, that's not gonna change :P

the servers that are hosting my site will be running a red hat linux distro. bear in mind that i prefer gui interfaces for web design, as well i edit and touch up the html, yeah - but i'll be damned if i wanna spend my life typin html tags over and over again when i can use prearranged scripts and formats to do it for me. the laziest way is not the BEST way, but it is the EASIEST way!

[Gindipple]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by kragt:
<B>Apache/PHP/MySQL is the slickest combo for web development I've used yet. PHP is a very easy language to pickup, especially if you have any background in C/C++. Add to that the fact that you only have to pay for the hardware and not the OS, web server and database server and it becomes a great choice for a website. You might want to download homechicken's html libraries, I've found it is much easier to write html pages using php scripts with these libraries than writing them by hand. You can find all his libs at http://www.zend.org/search_code_author.php?author=homechicken
</B></font><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Thanks Kragt!

Over the last few days I'm convinced this php/MySQL thing is the way to do a website.
And as for resources on the web...there are tons of sites dedicated to help with it.
I installed apache/php in under an hour on Win98 at home and had a simple demo working in no time.
Next step is to add the MySQL.
On the job I installed freeBSD/apache/php/MySQL (took a bit longer cuz we did full compiles) but I'm already writing dynamic DB driven forms with it
The shopping cart example has alot in it to get you going on many similar apps.


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Gindipple (Gnome) stands here.

[Daz]

Hey Gin, I am a bit confused here - Apache is a web server stuff, you said you installed it on win98? I was always under the impression that I would need serverside *nix systems to run those. are you saying (and yes, i totally admit to my cluelessness here, so i am asking) that i can run this on top of windows XP and not give up my OS, or how does this work?

[Gindipple]

Yup it can be ran on even Win98.
I'm doing it only as testing there and even apache warns against using such a lame machine to do anything commercial on.
Win2k or NT they say should be ok, no idea on XP.
Just go to apache's main site and it should say.
www.apache.org


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Gindipple (Gnome) stands here.