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I imagine the 21st century has seen an explosion in the implementation of database driven websites. I, for one, have begun using db's for a few months now, with much to investigate about the pro's and cons. Essentially, I want to be able to produce 99% of the site from a database. To realise this goal, I'm gonna need help :)
So there's a few things I have in mind at the moment. Im learning SQL and a bit of ASP, PHP, C etc, so no doubt 6 months on I'll be laughing about what I had in mind when writing this. I'm beginning to wonder if the average webmaster can keep up with the speed of change and knowledge required to make a cutting edge site. Well I suppose if you have a cutting edge site you need to be better than the average webmaster but anyways
1. Headers
OK, So I started a thread about headers, and what I get from that will be put into my headers :)
barring the title, description and keywords tags, all the other stuff can be normalised. Im talking about all the stuff mentioned here [webmasterworld.com...]
So this will get an ID in some table and be included. I imagine I will have to make two and "sandwich" my titles etc in between
2. Other Cachable Stuff
Stuff that appears on a few pages is gonna get cached. Im talking about navigation bars, top of pages, bottom of pages etc which consistently remain the same throughout the site. If I make .htm pages that include this stuff, I can just reference it once in the DB.
IE this table
1main navigation.htm
2bit_of_site_navigation.htm
3another_part_of_navigation.htm
3. Body
The title, meta description, keywords and body text are all going to be unique. This is where most of the info will be held
Why am I approaching a web site like this? kilobyte for kilobyte, they seem much smaller than say, using a WYSIWYG editor. The information is stacked appropriately and only the simplest tags will be using in the headers/cachable stuff/body so use of HTML, time and file size are close to some sort of optimum. "I am the slowest part of the web creating process" :)
Im gonna be editing such a database online, which is gonna make it easier, and files can be uploaded to the database without a problem, all from a secure web page. Another idea is to have a pay-for-use services where the market of my site can inherit private URL's under my site and add content designed for their own needs, without all the hassle of HTML
Anyways, one problem/hassle in mind is using relative URL's in the database. Should I use absolute URL's to files or perhaps have something like this in a table
1intendedtarget.htm
2../intendedtarget.htm
3../../intendedtarget.htm
So when im referencing this in other tables, i can just use 1,2,3 etc if you see what i mean
Anyways, the whole purpose of this is to get a feel for database driven sites, its meant to be open ended. It would be a great Easter if I got to know a lot more about databases and how wonderful they are ;)
Richard
Is this confusing? Im just wondering about the pro's and cons of databases and the issues in my example if there are any kind takers :)
Yeah it does look overkill, mainly because it looked like I had to pay for something :( No deal, I wanna make it myself.
I sorta thought that someone in here would claim something like they have a "totally database driven site". I guess maybe not :)
