Database Driven Web Site, help please!?

Question

Hi
I have no knowledge of databases and although I can build web sites, I want to incorporate a membership throughout half of one of my sites which is non-viewable unless logged in. Also I want the site to be interactive, with automatic updates, much akin to forums. What is the best online free tutorial, book or information from which I can learn this? This is not a quick fix, I need, but something which will provide a professional and seamless result. Also what type of database should I be thinking of using?

Answer 1

youve got 2 issues.. one is how to store the info, the other is how to secure the site.

you can do either or both, but securing the site doesn't neccesarily require SQL. Eithe rprocess will probably require exposure to a scritping langauage like PHP, ASP, PERL, Ruby, Coldfusion or whatever.

Before selecting the SQL engine to use find what your ISP offers and select that.. it will almost certainly be MySQL, but could just as easily be file server SQL like SQLLite.

If you want an interactive site then then effexctively you are going down the route of creatign a content management system.. for that you will definatley want to start using scripts. You may also want to look at using AJAX to provide a better degree of interaction. AJAX is wahts behind most of th so called Web2 applications like Google Earth, Yahoo and many other sites.

You will probably need to use cookies (although its not required, in PHP for example you cna create a site that works fine without requiring cookies

Id suggest dooing a google on CMS (Contnet Management), AJAX, server side scripting

Ive alowasy found W3schools pretty good

Answer 2

Try something like Drupal, which a CMS (Content Management System) written in PHP and uses Mysql or Postgresql as backend. Much of what you want is boilerplate code and Drupal has modules that incorporates functionality like membership system, forum, e-polls, blogs, etc.

If you still want to build your own system, there are articles/tutorials at Zend and Sitepoint that will help you get started on a basic membership system.

Whether you use mysql or postgresql, it will be good to have some knowledge of these databases and SQL language. For SQL, pick up one of the O'Reilly books; it will be useful in the long run.

Answer 3

Although you could build this yourself using a database such as MySQL and a scripting language such as PHP or Python, it is likely to be quite hard if you have not done much programming before.

I second the recommendation above that you use a content management system (CMS). Drupal has been mentioned, other alternatives include Typo3 and Joomla. Most of these are completely configurable without much programming.

The very useful website http://www.opensourcecms.com has default installations of lots of CMS systems, and allows you to log in and play with them to see if they meet your requirements.

Answer 4

look up mysql

Answer 5

You can probably do this with PHP and MySQL: http://www.php.net/ , http://www.mysql.com/