Php/MySQL Web Design

[Adam]

Hi All,

First post, so bare with me. Nathan harmsworth of machynlleth invited me here, for your info, i'm assistant network manage at a school in leicestershire, with 500 pc's and associated kit, and about 8 servers. 1600+ users at last count.

I was asked to design and implement a school website when i first arrived back in september. I spent some time developing a nice little html/css site, and rapidly realised that it was going to be unmanageable aftera few months as a static html site.

I inlcuded a few 'i-frames' so that important news/jobs/notices etc could be updates with blogger.com, but i then started work on learning php and mysql.

A big part of my degree was working in Java 2, so i'm quite happy with that style of object oriented coding, but the php script style and database interaction were both new.

I have now reached the stage where i have a development version of the site written in php, which uses a script to scan through a page searching for keyword tags, and replacing them with the appropriate .inc files. The plan is that the staff should be able to edit the .ing files without b*llsing too much up.

clearly this is a very poor half way house when i've got such tools as php5 and mysql4.1 at my disposal. I don't suppose anyone (more than likely the creator of this lovelly site ) has any experience of similar projects? Thoughts on object oriented php as a whole? should i just try and learn scripting mentality? how about the mysql side? anyone into schema design for these sort of things?

as i say, java i can cope with, so if i can find a way to make the php job similar to java, i should be alot happier.... I have until sept to get this sorted, so i hope you can help!

existing static site with i-frames can be viewed at www.jcc.leics.sch.uk

Thanks in advance

Adam

[StewartKnight]

Heck, has your school not heard of WorkForce Reform, don't expect the teachers to do anything except teach. At my last school the teachers even wanted the admin staff to take on marking the work!!!

[Adam]

well, obviously that's the way they'd like it, but there are several layers of dept heads and directors of this and that not to mention the SMT that all fancy being able to update things... they'll porbably pass on the job to thier various admin assistants or p.a.'s but so long as it's not me, and they don't break the site, i'm happy.

there are dept's like art who'll want to be able to update an image gallery, and people in the main office responsible for updating the weekly newsletter and other such tedious tasks... if it were just a few i'd keep it simple and do it myself... but... being such a big place, we've got too much going on, and too much potential web-info to publish to be arsed with anything less than dynamic... the problem is.... i'm stuck! If only i'd have paid more attention during my jsp's module.... grrrr...

anyway... still waiting for a php/mysql guru...

Adam

[woody]

Have you heard of Contribute by Macromedia? I have seen it working. To edit a website, all a user needs to do is type in the url, and if they have permission to change something, it's a simple case of replacing old with new.

http://www.macromedia.com/software/c.../?promoid=BINP

Worth a look although I do think the webpage hsa to be created with Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver BTW does PHP and all that.

[Adam]

Thanks, I'll take a look.....

I do have to confess though, I'm a bit of purist when it comes to code.. i like to know and understand what's going on.... thus.... i despise macromedia and thier evil dreamweaver. I've pursuaded the school to buy a copy of PhpEd so i've got my IDE sorted. The idea you mentioned sound interesting though, would be nice if there's an open source implementation somewhere...

cheers

Adam

[Ric_]

Back onto topic...

You could try an opensource solution - e.g. Mambo (www.mamboserver.org)

If you know Java, why not use JSP to pull your data out of the database?

[tarquel]

Adam - take a look at TYPO3 (its what Powys use for their site now).

If you can setup the linux server to take its requirements, its well managable and basically damn good. You can make (like alot of CMS') different users have different permissions, make content testable first before publishing, really lock down what you want to happen, and tons more.

...can anyone tell I was impressed by it when I saw it? lol...

http://typo3.org/

You can still write your code and custom content to plugin to it too

Cheers
(and change my name pls :P)
Nath

[mark]

I'm a big fan of Wordpress. It has CMS aspirations but currently is geared more toward weblogs. The bare code is simple and well commented - and user permissions are in place so that you could have what you want now - straight out of the box. Just add any gallery module and you're done.

[russdev]

Hello Adam from down the road in place know as Lou -ga - ba -ro ga i.e Loughborough...

Anyway likme mambo but can be limited at times, have used cutenews php which was quite good and very easy to alter...

Russ