Website advice wanted

[Stephen Coates]

a simple example file would be good to have a look at, thanks.

Notepad++ is a nice editor. I have used it on Windows. Don't think it runs on Linux though. Gedit, which I use here does the same thing though.

[Submeg]

If I had the time and drive, I would do my own coding for mine...but I would rather spend the time working on other projects!

[Harrison]

That's the thing. If you know how to handcode it can be much faster, and the results are exactly what you want to achieve, plus you know the code only contains what it needs to, without any of the bloat webpage creators always add into the final webpage code. It also means if a website breaks you can normally work out why and get it back up again. Trying to fix a site created by a program can be next to impossible sometimes, as it can be really hard to untangle how the program built the site.

This isn't the same as using something like Wordpress, Joomla or vBulletin. It would take years of coding to get anywhere close to what these projects can do, and they are mature enough to just use them. All I'm referring to is more basic websites/pages you would code yourself.

[Harrison]

A basic example of some php within an xhtml webpage. I'm just showing the current time, and then loading the contents of another file into the page. Place both files in the same location and then load the index.php into the browser.

Obviously you will need to run these from a server for the php to work.

If you want to have your own local test server running to test php then download and install WAMP. It sets up an Apache server on your PC with PHP and MySQL already setup. You then just run WAMP and put your files into the WWW directory to run and test them. You access them by typing http://localhost/ into your browser.

[Harrison]

Here is the next example. This is a quick demo site I'm knocked up for you to take a look at to show you how to create your site using a template and php.

It's templated, so all pages load from a single template. It is fully xhtml and css coded. The layout uses purely div tags for page layout/position, with all formatting done in a css file. The different parts of the page that are static across the site are held within the template files directory so editing one element of the page is easy, and doesn't require editing the main index.php file where the whole page structure is stored.

Finally, the actual content for each page is stored in the pages directory, so page content can easily be edited without altering the actual site.

Fairly straight forward, and you will see it doesn't take much code to create. It is very basic with the only error checking being to see if a variable is set in the url for the page to load, and if it doesn't it automatically loads the home page. A lot more can be done in this regard, such as checking to see if a page set in the URL actually exists on the server, so that visitors can't break the site by typing whatever they wish into the url string.

To load the site place the whole contents of the zip file into your server's www and then load the index.php file.

Any questions, just ask.

[Stephen Coates]

Just had a look through those examples and I'm pleased to say it makes sense .

This will be very useful, and this method will be much better than the current one of basic HTML pages.

I ought to learn some CSS though.

[Harrison]

Glad it was useful. Any questions about website coding just ask. Happy to help.

[Stephen Coates]

I had a little play with this last year but then never got round to really doing anything.

Harrison, can you recommend any books on PHP or CSS?

I might have a play with content management systems, but ultimately I would like to have something I made myself.