Yellow Pages like. How to

[ArnoldoT]

Hey there, i got a question for y'all...

Im trying to create a database, which will work like the yellow pages... (you know, by initial or type of item) bur i have no idea where to start...

any ideas?
what should i read about?


thanks..


ArnoldoT

[nickc]

I would recommend reading up on PHP, MySQL and SQL.

Nick

[matauri]

This is a free Lite version of Yellow Pages. I've looked at it before & it seemed OK.

http://www.globalissa.com/showcase.php?n=4&p=1

[compusolver]

You've only asked about the easy part of your project. A Yellow Pages is a rather straight forward type of "lookup" application.

Ah, but how do you populate your data???

Now there lies an interesting question. We get lots of jobs for OCR'ing printed documents and parsing the info into an online database. But the really interesting stuff is where we have to write Web Robots to find and collect information and images.

I just did a job like that for a company with an online specialized auto parts business. We grabbed thousands of product descriptions and images in a single week and programmatically reworded some phrases and cataloged them for their online database.

[HardCoded]

I spidered 1.3 million Canadian businesses, complete with vitals, lat/long and yellowpages category info, for a bus. directory project I'm doing.

And someday, if I ever get some spare time/money, I'll finish it. :)

[madisonPete]

It AIN'T HOPELESS!.....

Check out this link: http://www.gochipmunk.com/html/home.html

Top row of choices: click on "Type Manager" choice.
I won't go into long explanations here.

The *.pdf page has 9 pages of show and tell. (You need Acrobat reader on your machine...
If you don't have it . . . go to www.adobe.com and get a free copy to view the .pdf file)

Page 7 will show some strange characters in the 2 white spaces (bottom center) ...
like [8b or [re . . . then some text.
These are macros for type face changes which takes place inside
Quark Xpress typesetting program.

After viewing these 9 pages click your browser back button -
returns you to more choices – then click on "Classified Style" choice . . . .
view that *.pdf file and you'll see what I mean about type face changes.