Newbie To Database driven web sites

[Silverhaze]

Hello all,
I have never used anything like MySQL or know nothing about PHP. But I’m looking to do an online directory that contains a list of companies. I want the visitors to be able to search by county and get a list of all the companies in that county (with all there information such as phone number, link to they’re web site, address, and so on). What would be the easiest way to do this? Is there a program I can buy to make this easy? It doesn’t have to be MySQL with PHP because we have no hosting service for this site yet.
Thanks
Silver

[cyanide]

php/mysql is a good choice.

youmay want to pop into www.hotscripts.com to find a script that will do what you want.
Some scripts are free and some are commercial

[vivekar]

Hotscripts has a lot of directory stuff.

For your custom requirements, you can hire someone to do it for you.

MySQL/PHP is a good combination.

If you do not have any testing bed, you can try some free hosting with mysql such as http://www.tripod.lycos.co.uk/

PHPTriad is a complete PHP development and server environment for Windows. It installs PHP, Apache, MySQL, and PHPMyAdmin, both installing and setting up the environment.
http://downloads-zdnet.com.com/PHPTr...-10264269.html

[Silverhaze]

Thanks for you’re replies.
I already host other sites on a sever that has MySQL, and PHP on it. So I have a place to test and play around with it, and I would really like to learn to do it my self :-) so what would be a good way of learning?
Thanks
Silver

[wmabear54]

Hi Silver

I would suggest that you buy a book. Online tutorials are good spend a little while going through them. But a better way for me was to buy a book I bought Sam's teach yourself PHP, MYSQL and Apache, tutorial's are good but don't put it together like the book will. It is well worth the effort I bought the book in July and it is coming along well.

Happy Coding
Mike