New To PHP Help

Tedglen2

hi im new to PHP, i have designed a wab site. with a simple header, side menu and footer layout

however i aint started using PHP yet and i need to for a prodject. all i cna gather is that in the future i am going to ahve a problem where when i connect to a datbase and display for example all users on my page in ain body depending on how long the list of users is going to determ the page size.

so if there is a huge list of users. my side menu will be streched ???

how can this be over come ?

am i right in saying this will be a problem

AIS4U

Tedglen2:

Welcome to the Forum.

I don't fully understand what you are saying, but displaying a list of users should not present any real problem.

First, I am not sure why you would need to display all of your users at one time. And, even if you wanted to do that, you could limit the number of users names that would appear at anyone time, to a reasonable number and then list another group or put them in a drop-down list.

Without understanding just what you want to do it is hard to give you an exact answer, but I am sure there is a solution for it.

Good Luck with your adventure of learning PHP.

Tedglen2

Lol im not sur ei understand what i mean myself. il try again.

Basically i made my template. it has a Menu on the Left and the content next to it.

So i was woundering. since the content will be diffrent. for example the users can post many messages on the same page, well i thought this would lead to the page being diffrent sizes each time.

So knowing that i took a look at my template and attempted to strech it to see what the effects would be.

i foun out that the side menu went all strange. TheLarger the page the more my side menu Goes to Lower and Lower.

how do you stop this so the menu does not move but the page can still be expanded.

Tedglen2

Here is a picture of what i mean. This is just a test of what i trying to do , i aint done any PHP yet , just wnated to make sure that when php is inserted into page and it expands depending on output how will i resolve things like the menu expanding

http://img496.imageshack.us/img496/4827/untitled7yx.jpg

Houdini

Using a content management system like PHP-Nuke, Mambo, XOOPs and others which are all free by the way. You could have a site and basically set it up the way you want with a nav bar on the left as well as other modules below the main module. What you have explained you have a menu bar on the left, that should be in its own table data (or table cell) with say a 30% setting for the width then the main content would be in another table data (or table cell) the footer would be in its own table with a width off 100%. The reason I mention percentages is because if you use hard pixel numbers some browsers or monitors with small resolution would have a horizontal scroll bar with percentages the page fits no matter what the size is.

Using PHP you Could have an index page that includes the left (or menu) then the main content and finally includes the footer. If you decided to add a header to your page with php you would just make your header and include it first. You will end up using tables to set to site to behave the way you want and a little CSS styling would help out quite a bit also. Try Googling for PHP-Nuke or Mambo or even XOOPs and look at how the pages look and you can get some ideas on how to set up your own site.

Tedglen2

i need to costamize the sit ei designed to work correct : (

its a prodject so its gotta eb my work if you knwo what i mean

Houdini

Copy this code (it works) save it as whatever you want .php (using the php extension). Run it and then there are comments that should help you along the way but you will see how tables, html, and php work.

<?php
//the header is below in its own table
?>
<div align="center">
  <table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" bgcolor="#990000">

<tr> 
  <td width="100%" height="125" valign="top"><p><font color="#FFFFFF"><strong>HEADER</strong></font></p>

    <p>&nbsp;</p>
    <p align="right"><font color="#FFFFFF"><strong>HI</strong></font></p></td>
</tr>
  </table>
</div>
<?php
// The left navigation panel note using a percentage for data cell width
echo "<table border=1 bordercolor=black cellpadding=5>"; //start the table for the left content and right cells here
?>

<tr>         

<td  width=20% height="400" valign="top"><font color="#000000"><strong>COLUMN 
LEFT</strong></font><br><a href='#'>Fake Menu Item</a><br><a href='#'>Another Fake Item</a><br><a href='#'>Even Another Fake Link</a></td>

<?php
// The main content is next
?>
<td width="60%" height="270" valign="top"><font color="#000000"><hr>CONTENT <hr><br>Just testing the content of the page with some real content to make sure that everything is going to look alright. Just by adding a little more</font></td>
<?php
// Right Column
?>

  <td width="20%" height="400" valign="top"><font color="#000000"><strong><center>COLUMN 
  RIGHT</strong></font></center></td>
  </tr>
  </table>
  <!--End table for the three cell here-->
<?php
// The footer could have its own table here if wanted.
?>      

<div align="center">
  <table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" bgcolor="#FF0000">
    <!--DWLayoutTable-->
    <tr> 
      <td width="100%" height="50" valign="top"><div align="center"><strong><font color="#000000"><center>FOOTER 
          COPYRIGHT 2006</font></center></strong></div></td>

</tr>
  </table>

NOTE you must have PHP on a web server to test this out.

EPJS

If you're using a table for the menu, and what you're talking about is the text getting lower and you want it to stay at the top (I hope that's correct), then you could just put valign="top" in your table.

Edit: Too slow, as I was reading the post above me was posted 😃 (it wasn't there before when I was reading this topic)
Nevermind

Tedglen2

Thanks for help and effort

Tedglen2

How do i use the valign="top" where do i put it?

Tedglen2

Basically how do i get text to go to the top of a table ?

Houdini

Lets look at a simple HTML example of a table like this one below;

<table width="100%" border="0"><tr>
<!-- Begin two sections menu and main content-->
<!-- The menu or navigation section is below-->
<td width="30%"><a href="#">Menu Item1</a><br><a href="#">Menu Item 2>
</a><a href="#">Menu Item 3</a></td>
<!--Now to start the main content below this comment-->
<td width="70%">This is where all your content will go between the td opening tag and the td closind tag. You can use breaks within here just like a normal  page so lets use to of them to make a double space.<br /><br />Now for a non indented second paragraph just to show the possibilities, you will notice that the left side table cell will stay right where it is even though I am adding a lot of stuff here in this section, mostly line breaks to add lines cause I don't have a lot to say and can not really type that fast.<br /><br />This is the last line of test and so I am going to cheat and copy and paste some test just to fill in some content. This is the last line of test and so I am going to cheat and copy and paste some test just to fill in some content. This is the last line of test and so I am going to cheat and copy and paste some test just to fill in some content.</td>
<!--OK now to close the row and table below-->
</tr></table>
<!--Now lets make a footer-->
<table width="100%"><tr><td><center><h2>My Footer</h2><br>copyright 2006</center></td></tr></table>

Tedglen2

In that example how can i make the left menu system stay on top ? even when i keep adding content in the content area, at present the menu always stays in middle

Tedglen2

Its kinda hard to explain.

i got 2 separate tables. i want one table to expand without the other expanding ?

if thats not possible i want the both tables to expand but the text to always stay at the top

Tedglen2

heres another link picture to show want i mean

http://img107.imageshack.us/img107/305/example5mx.jpg

Houdini

place the valign="top" right after table width="30% like below

<td width="30%" valign="top">

also remove the stray > just before the third item and add a <br /> Hey I typed all that up as fast as I could.

Tedglen2

Il try that now. While oyur here could you help. i have made a tmeplate all in HTML how hard will it be to ocnvert to PHP so template can use PHP code

Houdini

Would have to see the template first but it is not really that hard, but without seeing your code or template it would be hard to help much more. Do you have a web server on your local machine to test code with?

Tedglen2

Houdini do u use MSn messenger ? i could send u template ?

MrPotatoes

i say try out www.dragonflycms.org. that is going to be my website CMS for awhile until i finish mine. and you can keep working on your project as usual. really quick install and good help in the forums. i'm on those forums as well.

the connection to the DB isn't hard at all. just keep plugging away at the coding and you'll get it all down pat pretty easilly. i got it in less than a week. and the people here seem very helpful so just rock out dude