User Customizable Site

Madwacker

Hi-
I have a question relating to .CSS, and the ability to let the user who visits the site, select a style from a drop down menu. When they select say "Christmas Theme", the whole site will now load from the Christmast Theme .CSS .

I have the basic idea working. I have a form, you make your choice...the form submits to a 'do_action.php' page, but then the .CSS is applied to that 'do_action.php' page.

I think using cookies would work but I'm not sure how to do this... 1) Select your Style 2) Embed a cookie that tells every page on the site to use .CSS X

I need some direction, tutorials, other ideas...

Thanks in advance!

Duey

cant be bothered writing code.
but hes some.

//do ya form on post do this:
$css = $_POST['css'];
if ($css == "1"){
$html_css = "christmas";
}
if ($css == "2"){
$html_css = "easter";
}
setcookie("css_type", $html_css, time()+99999);
//so on

getting css to use:

$html_css = $HTTP_COOKIE_VARS['css_type'];
echo "<link href=\"$html_css.css\" rel=\"stylesheet\" type=\"text/css\">";

Madwacker

can you clarify ...I'm not exactly sure what you mean. I get the idea, just not where everything should go.

Duey

the getting css part should go on every page. really it should be echoed between the <head> tags.

the first part goes on the page where the form is submitted to.

Weedpacket

Of course, in many modern browsers, one can just list the CSS files:

The browser would use the first by default, and there'd be a menu option somewhere to select one of the others.

waygood

Use the above code for multiple stylesheets, but a useful switch tool is to use the following:-

The first stylesheet is repeated at the end to make it the default

Madwacker

Thanks -

I guess what I need to know now is... can I do this with just 1 page:

1) User selects the customized theme they want from a drop down on any page in the site

2) Whatever is picked, a cookie is set and then every page reads in the cookie.

3) Whatever page this was done on, reloads to show the new theme.

**How do you get it to submit to itself, set the cookie, then reload and read in the cookie?

Rohan_Hill

Ah, I know how to do this, I just recently made a script that does this for my site, have a look at my site to see it work. What you need is a selection form which submits a value to a PHP script, saying which style you've chosen for the page. The script then sets a cookie by the setcookie () function and sends the user back to the page they've come from, $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'], with some other page to go to just incase it can't detect the referer.

Then at the top of each of your site page, which you'll have to rename to .shtml so they can have Server Side Includes, put a Server Side Include to a script which detects the cookie with the $_COOKIE array and prints out the appropriate <style> tags.

Does that help?

Madwacker

Ok - here's what I have thus far

in the page that the form is submitted to:

$fun_css = "<link href=\"fun.css\" rel=\"stylesheet\" type=\"text/css\">";

if ($_POST["selStyle"] == "Fun") {
setcookie("css_type", $fun_css, time()+99999);
$_SERVER['HTTP_REFERRER']

and so on...

Now I don't know what to do for every page on the site as far as reading the cookie in, and where do I define what exactly fun_css.css is?

Madwacker

bump

Madwacker

OK!

I got it working...Thanks guys! Now I only have two small bugs left to fix.

a) If i put the $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'] or [Location: foo.php] after i set the cookie in the if statement, or even totally out of the if statement block {} ..the cookie will not set and it will just refer (if it can find the refer-er..most times not) or send me back to my set location.

b) I need to reload/refresh the page...but Im sure this will be taken care of if I can figure out letter (a)

thankyou!

acidbox

<script language="JavaScript"> 
<!-- 
location.reload("<?php echo $PHP_SELF; ?>"); 
//--> 
</script>

you can refresh the page anywhere by using the above javascript code.

So bascically, you just set a flag. If the flag is true, then run the javascript, and then set the flag to false again so it doesnt auto loop. got it ?

Madwacker

Alright..but I still need help in the are of:

If i put Refer or header(location) in the code, it wont set the cookie. But if I remove them, it will set the cookie and not refer.

ideas?

Rohan_Hill

You could just make it always go to a certain page, since it'd probably always be the same page you want it to go to. I just gave the example of using the referer since that's how I do it on my site, I don't always want the users to get sent to the same page.

Madwacker

Ok- it all works, everything is peachy. I just tossed in some JScript that did a location.replace() and that did the reload.

Thanks guys!