Software tool available to manage php website?

[Webster_too]

Hi, I was handed a website using php to do maintenance like updating text and images.  I am not familiar with php but do perl, javascript, html, etc.  I have access to the website control panel, have set up ftp and downloaded all files.

I have tried tracing the path to where the text and images exist but find the php is a convoluted mess, not reaching the location of what I need to change.

Is there an IDE or development software to open the file system, find the correct location on the website and make the text and images changes?

Thanks.

[ginerjm]

There are many good IDE platforms for doing those things.  But they only provide the tools to do it - not the knowledge.  Use the tool to navigate thru the software and find the things you need.

What does 'tracing the path' mean to you?  If you don't now any php it's going to be hard to debug the software.  'Tracing the path' could mean that you need to add some php echo lines to display the contents of some variables which might tell you what you want to know.

Maybe you can identify a small section of code that you want to learn about and post it and we can add some code to display the things you want to decipher.

[Webster_too]

Hi, thanks for responding.

At this time, I'd like to change some text and images.  The website is working as it is.  I am searching for where the text and the images are called.  By "tracing the path," I am starting on the index.html page and following where the Events link goes, then where that script goes, then where that script goes, then where that script goes, and I still cannot find the text and images I want to change.

Is there a software application like Dreamweaver or whatever that shows how the website is put together and where the text and images are hiding?

Thanks again.

[requinix]

Most editors and IDEs will let you open an entire folder as a project and then search across all the files for something you want. If you know what the text says, or the filename of the image, then you can search for that and see where it is.

[ginerjm]

Can you SHOW us the code for the 'Events link' so we can at least try and help?

[gizmola]

On 10/17/2023 at 4:24 AM, ginerjm said:

Can you SHOW us the code for the 'Events link' so we can at least try and help?

Indeed, typically there will be variables, and images and other assets will be referred to using variables, that might even be read from the database.  There's a lot of different possibilities.  Without specifics, people are just guessing.

[Psycho]

If you are wanting to change images - that might be very easy. If you can load a page where the image you want to change is displayed, you can just right-click on the image and select an option to see properties of the image where that image "lives" on the web server. E.g. in Chrome you can select "Open image in new tab" or "Inspect". For many websites, the path you can see in either of those would show you were the image is located on the webserver. However, some web applications might have a src for images that goes through some intermediate process to pull the image based on a parameter (e.g. something like "loadimage.php?img_id=5"). If that's the case, then you can open the php file the image src points to and try to decipher the logic on how it gets the image. One word of caution though, an image could be used in multiple places. If you are only intending to change it in one place it would also change it for any other locations you are unaware of.

As for text, it is not as simple. Typically the content is "built" from many different files (as you've see by inspecting the index.php and trying to trace through the files that are called). If the text for a particular page is hard-coded within a file, you can use an IDE (or even robust file search tools) to search all the files in the repository for certain words/phrases within the content to see what files have that content. If the content is in a database, then you would have to figure out what tables(s) the content is stored in and search them for the content. however, if the content is within a database, I would think there would be an "admin" area of the site in order to update the content.