PHP Beginner - Dynamic Website

[hicksjt]

I’m looking for some guidance on implementing PHP into a website. By no means am I a coder or hardcore programmer, merely someone who can do the basics with the language. At the most, it would be something like the “hello world” in every example of a beginner PHP book. I was curious if PHP would be a [i]better [/i]choice in my situation.

I am going to build a CSS based website. Once it’s finished the plan is to hand the site off to a non-technical user where they can add text content themselves. It doesn’t have to be complicated but enough to where I can show them how to update the website. Probably the most information that will be changed is a simple 500 word paragraph.

Any additional content such as an image or a complete site overhaul I would come in and create myself, so updating content that way wouldn’t be a big issue. I have thought about installing a content management system but I believe with 6 web pages and for my purposes (as mentioned above) it would be overkill.

Any advice or feedback would greatly be appreciated.

[SpeedBird]

Here are some good starting places:

The PHP manual: [url=http://www.php.net/manual/en/]http://www.php.net/manual/en/[/url]

The MySQL manual (assuming you will be storing the information in a database): [url=http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/index.html]http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/index.html[/url]

A quick tutorial on using [url=http://www.freewebmasterhelp.com/tutorials/phpmysql]PHP & MySQL[/url] together

And if you want a book, [url=http://www.amazon.com/MySQL-Dummies-CDROM-Janet-Valade/dp/0764516507]PHP & MySQL For Dummies.[/url]

That's pretty much what I use.

[php_joe]

It sounds like you're asking if PHP or CSS is better?

You can use them together. I'm a big fan of PHP. If you are making a webpage for a "non-technical user" you can even use the [b]nl2br()[/b] function to allow the user to enter their text in a text file (without any code required) and the PHP will add the html break at each line break.

Joe

[hicksjt]

[quote author=php_joe link=topic=112807.msg458004#msg458004 date=1161876469]
It sounds like you're asking if PHP or CSS is better? [quote author=SpeedBird link=topic=112807.msg457998#msg457998 date=1161875963]
Here are some good starting places:

The PHP manual: [url=http://www.php.net/manual/en/]http://www.php.net/manual/en/[/url]

The MySQL manual (assuming you will be storing the information in a database): [url=http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/index.html]http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/index.html[/url]

A quick tutorial on using [url=http://www.freewebmasterhelp.com/tutorials/phpmysql]PHP & MySQL[/url] together

And if you want a book, [url=http://www.amazon.com/MySQL-Dummies-CDROM-Janet-Valade/dp/0764516507]PHP & MySQL For Dummies.[/url]

That's pretty much what I use.
[/quote]

Joe
[/quote]

SpeedBird, thank you very much for the references. I will check them out.

php_joe, I wasn't asking if PHP or CSS is better, I was building a website with CSS and going to use PHP as the back-end  :) If all the user does is type some text into a text file and let PHP do the rest than that's exactly what I'm looking to do. Thanks.