General Script Cleanup requested, help?

[Getintothegame]

Okay, please bear with me. I've been a fan of HTML for ages now and really am going to try to be working on expanding my PHP knowledge in the next few months. I've been working with a few books and online services and have the general grasp of it, however, my ways of scripting are very inefficient.

 

I was wondering if someone would help clean this small script up and explain why they changed what they did? I'd very much appreciate it.

 

<form name="input" method="post" 
action="<?php echo $_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME']?>">
<title>Getintothegame.net News Post</title>
<?php
echo 'Now:      '. date('m/d/Y') ."\n";
?><br><br>
<label for="firstname">Title: </label>
<input type="text" name="name" id="firstname" /><br>
<br>
Story:<br>
<textarea name="story" id="longstory" cols=70 rows=18/></textarea>
</p>

<p><input type="submit" name="submit" value="submit" /></p>
</form>

<?php

if (isset($_POST['submit'])) {

$date = date('m/d/Y');
$name = $_POST['name'];
$story2 = $_POST['story'];
$story3 =nl2br($story2); 
$story = ereg_replace("\n", " ", $story3);  
$path = "../news.txt";
$handle = fopen($path, 'r');
$oldcontent = fread($handle, filesize($path));
$handle = fopen($path, 'w+');
$content = $date .": " . $name . "¶" . $story . "\r\n" . $oldcontent;
//echo $content;
if(!fwrite($handle, $content)) {
  echo "File write failed.";
  } else {
  echo "Success!";
  }
fclose($handle);
}
?>

 

Thank you again!

[monk.e.boy]

I'd use a database to store my data.

 

But other than that it looks good.  :)

 

monk.e.boy