Dynamic PHP Website - Dreamweaver

Barks · 18 Oct 2012 at 11:53

A few weeks ago I knew nothing about Dreamweaver and little about Website design but I've made huge progress by working hard and following tutorials over the internet.

Question: Realistically, with little knowledge of PHP, could I teach myself to create a dynamic website where users can login and actually change content remotely?

Are there templates for this sort of thing or is this extremely advanced, requiring advanced coding knowledge?

Thanks

Barks · 18 Oct 2012 at 14:57

I've started following basic PHP tutorials since the OP and am just using Notepad for now.

I'll try and cover as much as I can today. I taught myself QBasic over 10 years ago so it all seems very intuitive so far.

Ideally I want to design a simple 5 page website but with a function that allows someone to login and change only the content of each page. I'll have a look at CMS tutorials when I'm done with learning the basics.

Thanks a lot guys.

Barks · 22 Oct 2012 at 08:53

I've decided to use Coda 2 on the 7-day trial and liking it so far.

Got the basics covered and now following a 50-video course on building a simple CMS.
It's early days but it doesn't look too hard. The real challenge will be whether or not I can implement it onto my existing websites.

Barks · 27 Oct 2012 at 11:56

I had to put my PHP learning on hold this week as I had to do a lot of work for someone. I know how to do a basic form using PHP but it submits the data by using an email client which is utterly useless.

Is it quite difficult to either implement or create a script that will securely email the contents of quite a complicated form (we're talking a travel clinic form for a medical website and so there's about 2 pages of data) to an email address.

Security is quite an important aspect due to patient confidentiality and so if this is not possible I'll advise that an online form simply isn't secure enough to use for this purpose.

Thanks

Barks · 27 Oct 2012 at 17:57

Thanks for the pointers.

I have the experience to design a clean, effective CSS based website which is what I have done. I just wanted to know how difficult it would be and clearly it is way beyond what I am capable of at this present moment in time. They asked me if it would be possible to implement such a form in the near future but it's not something I promised as such. We'll stick to a downloadable PDF for now and I'll plough on with learning PHP.

Barks · 28 Oct 2012 at 12:19

Craig R said:
Considered using Wordpress as a CMS?

I have but I'd rather just learn PHP in as much detail as possible so in the distant future I've got the ability to work with a wider range of projects. I don't see the point in taking a shortcut so to speak.

I've done programming before many years ago so I'm hoping I'll have an advantage learning PHP. If it turns out after a few weeks that it really is going to take me a long time then I'll go down the Wordpress route but if that does happen then I should question whether or not web design is something I can do.

Barks · 28 Oct 2012 at 12:23

Just out of interest. I've assumed it's significantly quicker/easier to learn how to use Wordpress as a CMS. Would it be relatively straight forward to do so.

Barks · 28 Oct 2012 at 16:47

I'll stick with PHP and not take on any work I can't do for now. I'm going to spend November learning as much as possible.

Thanks for the advice people.