personal webpage for users

how?

[Webbies]

On some websites (communities)users are able to register and then create their own page where they can write about themselves, their interests, send messages to other users, upload a couple of pictures and so on. How is this done? With PHP?

webbies

[TechnoGeek]

Hello, webbies.
User management as you describe can be made with PHP, but keep in mind that PHP is only one kind of server script language. Those systems can be also made with any other server programming language, as for example Perl.
Regards.

[mack]

This is not a simple thing to set up. It can be done with php but a lot of this will depend on what type of server you are going to run your service from. If you are going to use a Linux server then php/mysql may be the way to go. If you are on a windows box then ASP or ASP.net would be a good choice.

Either way the fundamentals remain the same. You will need to have a sign up page that will create your users. You can then opt to store your user information in a database or as simple flat files. (text files)

As for member pages this can be done in a number of ways. You can have dynamic pages that are generated on the fly when a user views then or you can have static page that are real pages that are stored on the server.

An example of a dynamic page would be...
example.com./showuser.php?name=mack
whereas a static page would be like this...
example.com/showuser/mack.php

In order to build something like this you would really have to do quite a lot of reading up on php/mysql or asp programming. You may be able to use an open source user management system and modify it to your own needs. Sometimes open source software can be a great foundation for applications.

Mack.