help someone trying to learn php

[pooker]

Hi, I finally decided today was the today to try and learn php.  I have had classes on c++, visual basics, etc and php always appealed to me since I work with forums alot.

 

Anyways, I am just trying some basic stuff to learn and reading tuturiols, but right now I am making a website and I want to easily be able to edit the website without having to mess with the php code, is there a good tutorial on this? 

 

I have the website broken into many parts, a header.php, footer.php, and nav.php, and then my scripts in the center.  I would like to be easily able to edit any of these php files through maybe like an admin control panel, is there a good review on this?  I am a quick learner so please feel free to also try and explain. 

 

Thanks ^^

[jonsjava]

so, to clarify your question: you are wanting to learn how to build your own CMS?  Those can range from simple to robust.  one thing all of them require is a database on the back end.  you would create a table like this:

CREATE TABLE `site_content` (
  `id` int(5) NOT NULL,
  `title` varchar(60) collate latin1_general_ci NOT NULL,
  `date` timestamp NOT NULL default CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
  `content` mediumtext collate latin1_general_ci NOT NULL,
  `active` smallint(1) NOT NULL,
  `category` int(3) NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY  (`id`),
  UNIQUE KEY `title` (`title`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 COLLATE=latin1_general_ci;

This table will hold all your content, a numerical representation of which category each post falls under, the title (which must be unique), the date of the post, and an integer that will determine if that post is active (if it should show the post or not).

From there, it's a matter of building the code for login, a form to post data, and a way to clean up each post.