Help me with dynamic web programming.

[SinNisTeR]

I want to make a website, but I want it to be dynamic. I dont know where to start. I keep hearing how people use php or jsp to make dynamic pages. Sounds like what I want since I dont want to make changes for 20 webpages everytime i want to update something. Where to start? I have knowledge in Java and C, but not jsp/php/mysql.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Do you have a server hosting account yet?

Have you looked at the hosting company to see what of { ASP, PHP, Perl, JSP, shtml (server-side includes) } it supports?

What do you really mean by "dynamic," that's like saying you want a C application to be "interactive" which is way too vague. You need to list some specific features and goals.

 

[SinNisTeR]

I don't have a host. I have my computer acting as a server for now. (I have php/mysql/apache installed).

By dynamic I mean that all the pages use a template of some sort. For example, I'd like one main template page, then have a section of that page that would get updated and changed around to be the index page, About page, or FAQ page, instead of copying and pasting everything and chaging the main body. This way, when i change one single menu option, i don't have to change 10 different pages or more everytime.

Also the other aspect of dynamic is like that of most sites with products. I know newegg doesnt have 40000 separate webpages for each item they sell. I'd like to know how to do something like that.

 

[DaveSimmons]

For simple shared javascript code and fragments of shared HTML, you can "read them in" like an # include by using .shtml as the extension of the main page and using this command:

< !--#include virtual="../VIRTU/navbar_subs.htmlf"-- >

(remove spaces at < > we used ".htmlf" for "html fragment" but you could use ".htm" or ".js")


For a store, you'd need an e-commerce package, which uses a database plus offers a shopping cart.

For masses of information (e.g. hardware reviews), you'd need a "content management system" that also stores the content in a database and serves it up as pages.

 

[everman]

Since you have php/mysql/apache set up, I would start there. Make a database of some kind of information and then write code to do stuff with it. You can do progressively more advanced stuff as you gain experiance.

 

[skeedo]

Originally posted by: SinNisTeR


Also the other aspect of dynamic is like that of most sites with products. I know newegg doesnt have 40000 separate webpages for each item they sell. I'd like to know how to do something like that.

THeres no sense programming something like this yourself when so many free scripts exist to do this already. Check out www.oscommerce.com

 

[randumb]

Since you already know Java, you should learn JSP (Java Server Pages).