I have a million subpages. How can php help me?

Innocent_Kiss

I'm working on a site that'll have a lot of subpages on it. How can php help me?

Thora_Fan

Can you be a little more specific?

rpanning

The biggest one that may be of use to you is templating. You can have PHP insert the main design on each page so then when you change your design you only have to do it in one spot. There are several functions for using PHP, it all depends on what you want to do. Such things as form processing (like send an email to you via HTML form), database interaction, and I've even made a script that will automatically make you navigation list based on HTML files on the file system.

Innocent_Kiss

I apologize.
I'm new to php and was referred to it by a friend. I'm currently working on a web site that'll have a lot of subpages. My question to you is, why should I use php? In what ways will it help me maintain my "million" pages?

Thanks rpanning 🙂

bastien

Its fast, powerful, dynamic and able to connect to almost any DB on the planet. For instance, you say you have a lots of subpages (like a products page for a store (say 100,000 products), you could have 100,00 pages and maintain them all or

you can use PHP and a DB with some templates. Your 100,000 is reduced to 1 or 2 pages that call the DB and fill in the template. You can place your nav stuff in an include file and have to maintain only 1 nav file, 1 file for a DB connection string info, again only 1 page.

You can easily integrate new technologies like XML into PHP and make truly compliant sites with XML and CSS. You can write files on the fly (ie create a XML file from stuff in the D😎

Innocent_Kiss

Originally posted by bastien
Its fast, powerful, dynamic and able to connect to almost any DB on the planet. For instance, you say you have a lots of subpages (like a products page for a store (say 100,000 products), you could have 100,00 pages and maintain them all or

you can use PHP and a DB with some templates. Your 100,000 is reduced to 1 or 2 pages that call the DB and fill in the template. You can place your nav stuff in an include file and have to maintain only 1 nav file, 1 file for a DB connection string info, again only 1 page.

You can easily integrate new technologies like XML into PHP and make truly compliant sites with XML and CSS. You can write files on the fly (ie create a XML file from stuff in the D😎

Wow..so it does have great benifits! I just started looking into php yesterday. Absorbing all this information is really time consuming anf tiresome, but for some odd reason, I like it 🆒 Thanks for the information! As a php dummy, where should I began?

Thora_Fan

I would strongly suggest getting yourself a book. I recommend the PHP 4 Bible. I found it rather easy to understand and pretty thorough. It covers a lot of stuff, and a lot of what you would need to convert these millions of subpages into just a few, like bastien mentioned. It may take you a little while to pick it all up, but in the end, the maintainability and consistancy will be worth it.

There are also many sites out there that have PHP tutorials. I would suggest this site, Webmonkey (http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/programming/php/), and Zend (http://www.zend.com/zend/tut/). It all may seem a little overwhelming at first, but PHP can be picked up by almost anyone who has a little spare time and the desire to learn.

bastien

don't forget the manual

www.php.net

Innocent_Kiss

Originally posted by Thora_Fan
I would strongly suggest getting yourself a book. I recommend the PHP 4 Bible. I found it rather easy to understand and pretty thorough. It covers a lot of stuff, and a lot of what you would need to convert these millions of subpages into just a few, like bastien mentioned. It may take you a little while to pick it all up, but in the end, the maintainability and consistancy will be worth it.

There are also many sites out there that have PHP tutorials. I would suggest this site, Webmonkey (http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/programming/php/), and Zend (http://www.zend.com/zend/tut/). It all may seem a little overwhelming at first, but PHP can be picked up by almost anyone who has a little spare time and the desire to learn.

Thanks so much Thora_Fan! I'm going to search around for the book, possibly on ebay. I do have a lot of spare time and a great desire to learn, so with a little hard work, I'm sure I'll get it. Sooner or later. Thanks for everything!

Oh, thanks Bastien! I'll check out php.net, too 🙂