ok, i had gotten some help on these forums earlier today and figured this would be a good place to ask.

i have a pretty straight-forward website set up, made with dreamweaver (no content at the moment) and had a few questions as to how i should now proceed.

http://webpages.charter.net/bennn/about.html

check out the site first, then you'll understand better what i'm asking.

ok, i want the banner at the top and navbar on the bottom to stay put, but when a user clicks a link, just the section in the middle will change. i also would like to be able to add news posts, kind of like a blog. i would want a news archive. i'd also like to have an "art gallery" on the art page with all my digital art.

would php be best used for this? i've never used it, but have found several really informative tutorials on creating a blog site from scratch with dreamweaver and php. i also have coding experience. and that's pretty much it. if i can i'd like to try and make it as EASY as possible to update this site and add new content as i learn more.

i'm sure what i'm asking can be done several different ways, but so far, it seems php would be my choice...but i figured i'd ask here before i dove in ;)

- Ben C.

;;;ok, i want the banner at the top and navbar on the bottom to stay put, but when a user clicks a link, just the section in the middle will change.

Two options come to mind:
1..Flash
2..DHTML (layers)

If your not a Flash guy Layers would be the way I would do it, you need proficiency in Javascript, HTML and CSS. DHTML is very browser dependant and requires allot of code to make it work in 'most' versions and browser types (this is why Flash is better, just need the player)

An example of this (DHTML) maybe seen on the 'home page' of this site:
http://www.thecoderoom.co.nz/

;;;would php be best used for this?

PHP vs ASP shouldnt be decided on what functionality you want or how you want something to work. What platform you intend to run it on should decide what scripting language you use.


Wind is your friend
Matt

i'll be running it on windows xp.

ASP is what you need to write then.

In saying this I have some ASP scripts running on a UNIX box using a third party product called Chillisoft (SUN) I was happy with it at one time until I found thier documentation to be incomplete and a little mis leading. If you want to run something simple, it will work however I would not use it again.


Wind is your friend
Matt

PHP actually runs perfectly on a Windows box... I don't see why you should use ASP, especially when there's so many pre-built solutions to what you're trying to achieve written in PHP.

-Snib
Where will you be in 100 years?
Try new FreshView 0.2!

check this out.


http://www.fusionphp.net/index.php?c...&page=features

i think i might just go with this since it's all i want to do in the first place.

a news posting "program". the "about" and "contact" pages of my site will be static. the "news" and "art" pages will be dynamic. pretty simple.

i might give this fusion thing a try. and maybe i wont even need to install apache or mysql. i have a feeling both of those would just confuse the hell outa me, anyway :)

>> ok, i want the banner at the top and navbar on the bottom to stay put, but when a user
>> clicks a link, just the section in the middle will change

I assume that you want a template, as opposed to a fixed positioned header and footer. In which case PHP is a perfect fit for the job. If it is the latter, then I'd suggest you use frames. From what you describe PHP is a perfect fit. You can manage a blog using PHP and MySQL and create an art gallery using the PHP GDK (graphic development kit) extension, which allows you to generate thumbnails and that sort of thing. Of course other server languages can also do this (Perl, ASP, JSP, etc). PHP is becoming more popular because it runs on any platform (Mac, Windows and Linux), with virtually any HTTP server (Apache, IIs , Xitami, etc) and it's free. The same can be said for Perl, but Perl is a slightly more complicated language. Linux hosting tends to be cheaper than Windows hosting as well, so there's that factor to consider.

> If your not a Flash guy Layers would be the way I would do it, you need proficiency in
> Javascript, HTML and CSS. DHTML is very browser dependant and requires allot of code to
> make it work in 'most' versions and browser types (this is why Flash is better, just need
> the player)

I would avoid Flash, I don't see where this is required at all. And I don't see where any JavaScript is required (10% of surfers have JS turned off). That leaves HTML and CSS. Personally I'd pick XHTML and CSS and whichever you go with neither is browser dependant. Though you may have to employ a _hack_ for this or that browser from time to time, especially IE.



Regards,
Rich

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