online store - database lost when changing page styles?

[monaleasa001]

I am having a "online store" (PHP and Flash) created for me. I was told by the person building it that once the store is uploaded to the server and after I input my product database, the "look" of the store cannot be change without me "losing" my existing product database. Is this true?

Can the presentation of the store not be improved upon without losing my product database?

If anyone can enlighten me I would really appreciate it.

Also, I have been looking at a few "online store templates" for sale and I was wondering if there is a lot of work to make changes to them to accommodate a "Seed" store?

Thanks very much for you time and information.

Cheers, Jeannette

[rocknbil]

Welcome aboard monaleasa001, I cannot imagine a situation where changing a site template would affect the product database, but not to undermine some developer's thinking, there may be methods in place I am not aware of.

You have a database that exists in certain file sets on a server. The server side programming, probably in PHP (but can be any dynamic language) connects with this database and extracts data from it. It then compiles output and inserts it into a template to send to the browser. The three should be autonomous, you can make changes to the database, programming, and templates without one killing the other.

[monaleasa001]

rocknbil, Thanks ever so much for your info.. you made my day.. one less thing I have to worry about... Cheers,, Monaleasa..

[ergophobe]

I would say

- 49.999999% chance that rocknbill is absolutely correct and that your designer is an idiot.

- 50% chance that there is a communication issue between you and your designer and you misunderstood what s/he meant to say, but the designer is perfectly on top of it otherwise.

- 0.000001% chance that you correctly understood the designer and the site is being generated all in one go (rather than as each page is requested) from your database, but if you change the template you would need to regenerate site. That should not mean you lose the data though. It has to be stored somewhere if the site is running off it or generated from it.

So your first order of business is to ask how and where your data is being stored.

Your second order of business is to make sure that YOU and not the developer have complete control over and full backups of all aspects of this. By "you" I mean either you personally or your organization. I don't mean that you need to actually concern yourself with the technical aspects, merely that you are the owner of record of

- the hosting account
- the domain
- any and all proprietary scripts and designs that are on the site.

And that you have the passwords and login information for the above plus the database and whatever else there is even if you personally will never log in but will always hire someone to do this work.

If it turns out this isn't just some miscommunication and the designer really believes that if you change the site you will lose all your data, I would severe that relationship as soon as practical.

[monaleasa001]

ergophobe, Thanks very much for the additional information. I have printed out all both replies and I'm going to do some digging to make sure I use the correct language and references before I talk to the programmer. I'm glad I asked this forum for advice. Thanks again.. cheers, Monaleasa