content management & dynamic updating

[scorpion]

I'm looking for advice on the simplest way to run a set of dynamic webpages. Dynamic in the sense that text and images on the page (and possibly some links) change over time, but in a fixed pattern (e.g. weekly, biweekly, monthly updates)...the various cms systems seem quite complex considering the site has a very custom design/layout...

Would custom php scripting and a cron job be sufficent? Anybody know (simple) scripts or packages that say take text from a flat-file and format it, or take a directory of images and create thumbnails so you just have to update these files or a dbase and it pulls the rest?

Thanks

[davegerard]

You can grab all of the text right from a database, or flat file like a CSV (comma separated).

There are a couple of image components that will take full size images and resize them to thumbnails.

However, you're going to have to code the pages to call these things and get them to do what you want them to do.

Are you planning on hosting this in-house or hosting through some other ISP? If in-house, what kind of equipment do you have? Can I possibly take a peek at the current website so I can maybe give you some ideas?

Dave

[scorpion]

thanks, it will be on our own unix box, but the site is not up, we are looking for content management solution, and looking at stuff like LinksMySQL from gossamerthreads

[davegerard]

I developed a content editor for a few clients of mine that works pretty slick. I'm not too familiar with Unix, but the code is straight HTML and Javascript. Got it hosted on a NT box right now. If I can find the demo I did I'll send you the link.

Dave

[davegerard]

Okay scorpion.

Here is a demo of a trimmed down version of my content editor. Someone else actual came up with something sort of like this, but I hacked all there code up and rearranged things a bit. I had another version where the user could select font size, font face, and more and store that in a database.

Check out the source.

Dave

url snipped

[edited by: DaveAtIFG at 12:23 am (utc) on May 24, 2003]