What script should I use

[jasonweb]

I will soon be working on a website that needs content to be automatically updated over 100's of pages. I have not used a database to control web content before and was wondering what is the best way to go about this.

If anyone could point me in the direction of a tutorial I would be very greatful as I have limited experience in scripting.

J

[kgun]

What script or database or both?

1. By and read this Build Your Own Database Driven Website Using PHP & MySQL book.

2. The choice of databaseplattform is not unimportant. Today I got a master thesis from a student in Norway, that concludes that PostgreSQL is a more efficient database than MySQL on (nearly) all the tested tasks. That confirms my impression.

3. If you make a connection class, you can use the same API on different databases. Then you can code independent of database plattform.

In case of large future requirements, read this

"Today Gaia has a about 150 web servers behind our load balancer, and about 20 databases handling different features. Many of our old servers had been either de-commissioned or converted to storage servers. The new servers we're installing are all Opteron servers that are 4 times faster than older machines with the same power requirement. Since the ISP charges a lot for power, it's much more economical for us to upgrade.

We don't really believe in clustering. Rather we changed our database structure and the database abstraction layer to divide up data into seperate physical databases. That way we only need to add more of the same servers when upgrading, and we don't have to spend money on expensive clustering solutions and risk supporting a complex system.

We've just gotten another 20 database servers to replicate the existing ones for redundency. No replication is used for scalability or handling bandwidth. We still use MyISAM for small logs and data that doesn't get updated more than once a second, otherwise everything else is InnoDB".

The script is PHP.

Note, one of the easiest ways to learn a CMS system is implementing your own phpBB forum.

From a birds eye view, you learn to handle it and see how it is implemented. As you learn more and more code, e.g. by reading the above books and train, you will understand more of how it is done in that bulletin board code. You may also get a lot of "free" coding hints from that code.

[jasonweb]

Thank you Kgun I understood most of what you have said, basically theres not alot of difference in the

scripting I could use. PHP seems to be the way to go then. I think I'll have to buy "Build Your Own

Database Driven Website Using PHP & MySQL" and learn how do build the website from the ground up. Would it

be possible to set up user accounts so they could transfer shares and that kind of thing.

Thanks for your help I'm suprised more people haven't replied.

Jason

[kgun]

Any information you can store in rows (records) and columns (fields) is well suited for a relational database like MySQL.

Relational is the KW. There are relations between tables. You will be amazed how powerful that is when you understand it.

I can very much reccomend that book. It takes you step by step from learning command line SQL to making your own relational database system. I downloaded and set up my own XAMPP testserver with Apache, PHP, MySQL etc in 5 minutes.

Also read my post in this thread about writing secure PHP code etc.

And if you need a more advanced SQL (reference) book, I can reccomend

"Teach yourself Transact-SQL" in 21 days from SAMS publishing or similar pure SQL books.

If you want to use OOP, you find relevant information on the OOP site in my signature or in my post here at WPW A soft introduction to object oriented programming.

Conclusion:
1. Start by buying Yanks book.
2. It should not be too difficult to make your own test server.

Then you can make everything on your own computer even without connecting to the internet and test the site before you upload it.

You get (download) some code with the book, code that you may modify to suit your own needs.

Note there is a difference between PHP and compiled languages like Java, C#, C++ etc. Because of run time binding (PHP is a preprocessor) it is more flexible. That becomes especially important if you write OO PHP, objects interacting with each other at run time. But compiled code is much faster.

It depends on your needs. But as you see from my above post, large CMS systems and databasedriven websites are made in PHP and MySQL / PostgreSQL.

Good enough is best.

[wuxingrun]

suggest PHP+Mysql