not sure where to begin

[Jack_Mutter]

I'm a total noob to php. I've been playing with css and html for a few years for fun though.

My situation is this:

I have a simple one page html site using styles and I want to add a section on part of it that allows for anyone to comment on my posted works (art, creative writing). I would like it to be automatic and I heard php would be good for that.

Also, I would like to have a section where people could add lines or paragraphs to some writing in progress, a collaborative thing.

I assume the coding for these two things would be very similar since they both are pretty much the same idea. A text area to write in, a button, and then it shows up on the page after a refresh...

It sounds simple, and probably is, but I do not know where to begin.

My questions are:

Is there some script already out there that I can customize (shape size color etc) to do what I need?

or...

can someone point me to a place to start reading to work on this. I don't know if I would need to use a database or if I could use XML, or what. I really have no idea.

Thanks for any help in advance

~ Jack

[Doug_G]

Take a look around www.hotscripts.com there are probably many pre-made php apps that will do what you want.

If you download, install, and then spend the time to understand how the app you just got works, you'll have a good idea of what you'll need to do. The understanding how the script works might be a time-consuming endeavour 🙂