This is more of an HTML question than PHP, but it does relate to PHP and mySQL so please bear with me🙂 I've recently completed work on a classified ads application for a client dealing mainly in horses and equine related products. He would now like to be able to sell this service (not the application itself) to simliarly orientated sites thus allowing them to catalogue their products and animals.

The application is written in PHP (duh!!) and relies on a mySQL backend to store the info. His web host will not allow external access to the database so we can't setup potential customers with scripts which directly access the db, rather all of their queries must be passed through his site. The only way I can think of to make this happen is to have the customer give us a copy of their site's template which we will put on our server with the applications code including into it. I don't think it's feasible to try and give the customers PHP scripts since they may or may not be hosted on a PHP-enabled server.

My idea was to give the customer some html code which will open their template running on our server in a frame leaving their address in the location bar thus giving the illusion of still being on their site. The problem I've come up against is Netscape 4's seeming inablity to render either 0 pixel width frames (it always shows the frame at a very small width.... approx. 10 pixels) or frameset's with only one frame. While IE, Netscape 6, and Mozilla do not have these problems, I don't see much point in trying to do it this way unless it looks the same in all browsers.

Does anyone have any advice on how to make Netscape 4 display "hidden" frames? Alternatively, can you suggest a better method of displaying a remote address within another page relying only on HTML? Thanx for any help you can give!!

Cheers,

Geoff A. Virgo

    One clever solution I've seen is using JavaScript files (.js). All the customer's HTML has do is reference a .js file located on your server. The .js is generated with some PHP (make to use header("Content-type: application/x-javascript")). The .js file just consists of document.write() functions. It might be very tedious to implement though...but hey it's nice since it only uses plain ol' HTML. (sort of)

    Let me know if this something you'd be interested in - I'll dig up an example.

      Ricky,

      Thanx for the suggestion, but I tend to prefer not to use JavaScript for critical operations. Simply puts way too much control over the system in the hands of my users, which is of course a Bad Thing(tm). Lucky enough, it doesn't look like I'm going to have to resort to any of it. The idea has progessed into creating a horse trading "portal" site which will be sold as the service and the client's existing site will be subscribed as a client to that new site. Sort of the same idea that www.globeandmail.com and globecareers.workopolis.com have going on up here in Canada. Thanx again!!

      Cheers,

      Geoff A. Virgo

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