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i have been doing websites for small companies for a couple of months now. but my next client is a real challenge.
situation: if a person leaves a salon and the client wants to see where they are now. the stylist can put there info on this site so they can be found.
my client wants me to create a basic website that beauticians can post a mini resume (name of salon, previous salon, tools used, chemicals etc.)
i know i can create a form to be emailed to me to get that info
her goal is to start off with a 100 people
i need to create a database that will hold all that info. so far i have created 10 tables in MS Access breaking the info down. I dont know what to do next.
on the website i want the client to be able to search by state, zip, last name to find this person
i heard from others i should use ASP then HTML..i just dont know :(
can someone please break it down for me. in SIMPLE WORDS
Thanx
If you want the users of the website to be able to search the database then you would be well served using a database installed on your web server. Having the form simply email you the results is inefficient, because then you would have to go back and input the data yourself, making extra work and opening up the possibilities of human error.
Personally, I prefer PHP to ASP and I use MySQL instead of Access. Both PHP and MySQL are free and frequently available on Linux/Unix servers. If you are using a Windows based server, then you might be better off with ASP/Access because they might already be installed.
Regardless of the database and programming language you use to access the database, you probably won't need ten tables just to store the type of information you're storing.
You can create one table with several fields in it, such as:
ID
FirstName
LastName
Address
City
State
Zip
Country
Phone
Email
Current_Salon
Previous_Salon
Tools_Used
Chemicals_Used
Resume
Notes
Entry_Date
If you are going to allow people to search by state, zip and last name, you'll have to put an "index" on those fields.
After creating the database, you have to create programs to:
* Enter the data when the form is submitted
* Perform database queries and display results
* Edit/delete data
* Possibly a script to perform backups
These programs will be written in ASP or PHP, or whatever language you prefer. I like PHP because it works so well with MySQL.
but im still lost. you see i dont know asp or php. i did what you suggested with the tables. sorry to sound stupid. but can you break it down a little more for me. like... i have the table done. just for a test, i have 5 fake names in the acess table with all the info. now how do i get the datebase to the web and have it updated by the beautician.
I can tell you that learning how is much better than hiring it in the long run. When changes need to be made you can do it easily.
To learn how, I would suggest you download the free trial of Dreamweaver and spend every waking minute with it.
To hire someone, you can post the job in our commercial exchange or on guru.com but you will ultimately be at their mercy.
Yeah, that's the rub. I agree that it will benefit you in the long run to learn ASP, PHP or both, you may not have the time to do so before your current project is due.
Learning a programming language is an investment in time. It can pay you some very nice dividends, though.
