databased web sites - A philosohpical question

Anon

Hi:

I asked a variant of this quesiton awhile ago but am revisiting it as I think I've got a better handle on it. The crux of the issues is this: we're currently using Frontpage to author and maintain our site. We've started integrating PHP/database stuff to allow us to customize the pages depending on the user. Our site (www.insidespaces.com) contains mostly "how-to" types of articles that are currently static. So, the question is this: should we "wrap" everything using php code to provide authentication/database access and leave the bulk of the article alone or should we stuff the meat of the articles into a database and just pull them using one main php page that does all of the database calls/etc? Any opinions or links that might help would be appreciated.

Anon

If your text documents are static, it makes little sense to put them in database
as they would only take up space.
Instead, you could store information about the documents, such as it's location, type, subject etc in a database.

You can then use the database to search that information to find the document that the user is looking for, and compose a link to that information.

You can still wrap the static doc in php by including it into a script.
You can keep the document as "clean html" without any html relating to the layout of your site (no menu pictures etc, just the text), and read it inside a script at the appropriate place in your layout.

Anon

I agree with Vincent that storing your data in files might not be a bad thing ... but "to database or not to database" in a philosophical sense probably isn't the most important question. I'd start with some practical points and work toward the database vs. flat-file issue:

What's your business model?

You probably need to be looking at aggressive partnering and syndication. That leads to a need for multiple concurrent versions of your content (in terms of presentation). It might be more convenient to build that dynamically out of a database.

How do people find your content on your site?

There are two basic modes of navigation: browsing and searching.

Effective browsing requires an information space that makes sense to the customer. If you change your mind about how to structure that space -- or, if through syndication or partnering you need to support multiple alternative structures -- how does your backend support that?

For searching, how good are your search tools? (Not very good right now; try searching for "sheet rock" and look at the odd and duplicate hits.) If your content lends itself to structured searching, flat files won't do. Think about applying key words (not full text, but KEY words) to the documents to relate them to one another. A database might be the best tool for that.

How often does your content need to be updated, expired, et cetera? Maybe not a problem for you; sites with heavy updating or need for automatic expiration (with automatic management of links to an item) absolutely should be building on a database platform. That might or might not mean run-time dynamic pages; it could be done by "printing to html" from a database-backed content-management system.