website functionality

[chipy]

i want to create a website with functionality like that found on www.plentyoffish.com. i am almost certain they use a database to keep track of all the people and characteristics.

1) but how do they calculate the "10 miles from xxxxx zip code" to recall the relevant people?

2) is there a recommended tutorial online where they show you how to set up your website so people can create their own profiles, add pictures, etc? i assume there must be lots, but any particular one that someone here recommends?

thx in advance!

 

[Evadman]

1) but how do they calculate the "10 miles from xxxxx zip code" to recall the relevant people?

The easest way is to buy something You can also have Yahoo do it for you though a SOAP interface as long as your hits are < 1000 a day. Or you can do it the way I did and download the TIGER line data, toss it in a database, and use some math to determine the distance using the lat and long of the address or zip centroid depending on how accurate you want to be.

 

[ahurtt]

Usually people use a geolocation service of some kind to determine distances between zip codes. The Yahoo web service mentioned in the previous post is one such service.

To answer your second question, well, I'm not sure that you understand the magnitude of the question you posed. The way you asked it is kind of like a first grader asking how college works. (Maybe not the best analogy in the world but the best I could think of on moments notice) You can ask but you aren't likely to understand the answer you get. If you did know the answer to the question you asked, you probably wouldn't have had to ask question #1. Sorry I cannot be more help right now but the question is just kind of way too open ended. You've basically said "build me a house" but you have not given any detail as to how many stories it should have, how many square feet, or anything of that nature. Unless you are more specific, you aren't likely to end up with a house that you like very much. You could end up with a house designed for a midget when you are an 8 foot tall man.

Suffice it to say, unless you know some kind of programming language at the very least, you won't likely be able to do something like what you are talking about from scratch.

 

[chipy]

Evadman and ahurtt, guys thnx for your input. i'm definitely going to look into the Yahoo (and similar) services.

ahurtt, i've done web design / development in the past but it's been a while. i did more design than development (PHP coding) so while i'm not completely inexperienced in this area, i definitely need a tutorial and lots of practice. what i had in mind, as far as people being able to profiles and add pictures was something like plentyoffish or myspace.

i guess the logic would go something like this:

1) present webpage for user to input name, location, etc. (data)

2) when input, the PHP (or other language) code would take the data and insert it into fields of a database.

3) once that is done, present user with second webpage to upload pictures. pictures are stored in a user folder on the server and some sort of link or pointer indicates which folder is related to the data in the database.

so it seems there needs to be a:

1) link between the input webpages and the database.

2) link between query webpage (webpage for searching people) and the database.

3) link between user's folder (containing pictures) and database.


i am looking for a tutorial, even if it's basic, to do something like the above. i'm not sure if anyone of here has used a tutorial like that which has helped them learn the process.

thnx again!