Creating User Forms to generate new pages

Template for posting content to a website remotely

[D_Benway]

I am building a website for a used car dealership. The website will contain a limited number of pages which can be linked to from the index page. The index page will house a thumbnail gallery of the current inventory of cars. When a thumbnail is clicked it will load a new page with the details and images of the selected car.

I would like to build this site so that the owner of the dealership can update his inventory and post new cars without my assistance. In order to do this, I believe I will need to set up a "post" template that he can access by entering a password somewhere in the website or on a page that the general public will not have access too. This template must have designated regions where he can post images and descriptive text that generate a new page on the website when the form is submitted. I envision this to work something like a blog or the "craigslist" model, though with less information.

I am not sure whether to use "form" tags or javascript/asp, etc. Any advice would be most helpful. Thank you.

[MarkFilipak]

You conceivably could code your car detail pages something like carDetail<n>.html (where the number, n, has a maximum value) and do everything with forms via hardcoded HTML, but I think that would quickly run out of gas.

To handle car inventory numbers (the number on the windshield), you'll have to make your site dynamic. Client javascript or server script (choose[PHP, asp, Python, ...]) would fill the bill. If the inventory is small, then downloading a small database to the client when the main page loads and using javascript to reference that database is viable. However, if the inventory is large, then you'll probably have to get the server involved with some server script (but that's not mandatory as, so long as you don't have to access a real database, like SQL, then you can do everything in the client no matter how big it is -- issue is load time latency.)

Hope this helps.

Oh wait. You will need -some- server code running for the owner to enter photo-urls and descriptions.

[D_Benway]

Thanks Mark. I believe the inventory won't exceed 15 cars at one time—so javascript seems like the way to go. I know almost nothing about javascript besides the fact that it handles events. I've read up on it on the W3 School's website as they have many helpful tutorials. Could you possibly point me in the right direction as to what specific functions I should be looking to handle? Thanks again.