dynamic or static printer friendly pages

[Anon]

Question for all you php experts out there:

My organization's website is based on mysql/php backend - 95% of the webpages are generated dynamically using templates and database records.

We have been asked to create "printer-friendly" versions of these pages.

Now for your opinion/advice: should we (1)create another template called "print.php" for example and generate there print friendly pages dynamically or should we (2)create static html copies of each database record so that they are "print friendly"?

By "print friendly" I mean I want a page that doesn't have the text cut off the right hand side of the page (nevermind, for now, that the original page shouldn't do this
in the first place 🙂 )

Thank you so much for your help!

• Shawna

[Anon]

Um... Just make another template. If all your pages are already template-ized, this is the easiest and best way. Why make static pages? What are the advantages there? Then you're storing everything twice, plus if you make any changes to a content page, you'll have to go back and edit those by hand. No thank you! Just make another template and pass a var...

if(isset($printable)) {
$template_file = 'printable.tpl';
}
else {
$template_file = 'standard.tpl';
}

Or whatever...

[Anon]

Thank you Brian. This really wasn't a trick question and I am in total agreement with you! Unfortunately, we just had some consultants create printer-friendly pages by creating static pages of each database record (not known to me). Needless to say, I'm not very happy and have posted this question to find out if I'm just plain crazy or the only sane one in the bunch.

I need as much feedback on this topic as possible, whether you agree or disagree and why.

[kparker]

You're completely sane in this regard. With "consultants" like that, who needs enemies? :-)