Hi Everyone

[MargateSteve]

I am your typical newbie who has got as far as they can developing a database driven web site and now has come to the point were desperate cries for help are needed!! In fact I did join this site back in June and posted a question but there was no response, probably because of the way I set the question out. However, I feel I understand things slightly better now and am quite pleased with how far I have come along but there is still a long way to go.

 

I have redesigned the web site for my local football(soccer) team (http://www.margate-fc.com) and from the outset decided that is needed to be mainly php/mysql driven as a lot of the information (mainly statistics) would be replicated in several different pages. Also this would mean other people could update the site simply via forms.

 

The actual news side is powered by CuteNews and the static content is through PulseCMS but anything on the team side such as results, players and statistics is pulled from several tables.

 

I have been trying to master this for years but finally sat down and read up on the basics and coupled with Dreamweaver and a trial of PHPMaker have got the site working. However, both those programs are fine at getting a basic site together, both have restrictions that I have run into already.

For example, PHPMaker's drop down boxes only allow two display fields when I will, occasionally, need more. Dreamweaver likes helping you set up recordsets and queries that use one table but if you are using more it is down to hard coding. On top of that, I am, pretty sure that, because of their nature, both are guilty of putting in a lot more code than is actually needed and with the case of Dreamweaver I tend to copy working code and edit it for a new query so there may well be 3 or 4 bits of duplicate code that is redundant in a page.

 

What I am hoping to do now is sort out the two or three things I still have left to set-up with the site but also I would like to learn how do do all of this off my own back and not need to rely on third-party software. I have already tentatively dipped a foot into the water with this by setting up a list page that has add/edit/delete buttons and most of this worked other than hitting delete meant that the record was just deleted instead of taking me to delete.php and asking me to confirm I wanted  to delete.

 

I have searched forums and read up on the bits and pieces that I am still trying to do but in a lot of cases the descriptions have seemingly been written for those with a complete understanding and I am not yet in that category!!

 

So hopefully there are people on here who can fill the gaps I have and also not get too frustrated if I do not understand the instructions first time!

 

Regards

Steve