some questions on creating a site

OK recently my uncle asked me to do a homepage for his religious chorus...it is going to be sth serious...i have some knowledge on HTML but i know nothing of java or PHP..i started learning dreamweaver..what i basically need to do is find some scripts:one that will be able to create a form and give you the chance to search into the articles or the music database and one tht will make my uncle's life easier...:D What i want to say is that i want an app or sth that will give my uncle the opportunity to upload the articles in a simple way similar to here(in AO): he will enter a password and then write the article...automatically the article will be on the database and everyone will be able to see it or search for it....also do you have any ideas about enhancing the appearance of it?(any scripts if existing?)
Do you know where i can find all these? Anyway i will have a lot of questions as i proceed...
Thanks in advance
PS:also is there any good tute about understanding how these web apps interfere with a database?
PS: sorry if i am not very well understood ;)

Well, you could use one of the web hosts that provide templates for your web design. Then you or he don't need to know about HTML or linking as the site does it all for you.
freewebs.com (http://members.freewebs.com/) is one that come to mind. They will give you a basic site for free and if you wish to expand, then you must purchase their hosting. They also allow you the option of using HTML or their templates.
There are alot of other sites that do the same thing. A couple of threads have been posted here on 'AO' about this...search the forums for them. A google search will give you mulitple options also.

Well honestly its quite confusing to understand what youre really looking for :confused: you could teach your uncle the basics of webpage-HTML editing, downloading and uploading :) Lot of free-webhosts(if your uncle dont want to pay for it) nowadays provide easy html editing,webpage building and easy page add-ons. So easy even an elementary student could do it. freewebs is a good start like what moxnix said, but heres another one which offers a lot more add-ons (if you dont mind annoying adverts) music, religious article etc.. BRAVENET. It also has a lot of simple copy and paste javascripts. I dont really know what script are you looking for but whatever script is that, you could always find it here HOTSCRIPTS. To enchance apperance of webpage you would make, lot of easy ready to edit templates exists nowadays,(just like my stupid website)!
FREELAYOUTS! (if you have a little knowledge in Adobe photoshop or Paintshop Pro you could enchance templates to look more better.) Well thats all I know. I hope somehow it helped you! :rolleyes:

If i understand one of your questions properly, it looks as if you are looking for some blogging/news publication software. Not that you will be using it as such, but it still serves the same puropse. I have used many in the past few years but have found nothing better than GreyMatter. You install it on your server and it handles almost every thing. Some hosts offer an auto install utility on your cpanel or simmilar control panel software that will do the install for you.

Once you are up and running, you can go to greymatters control panel (by pointing your browser to where it is located on your server), login, and start adding content. You can configure everything from apperance, to archive options. All you will have to do to post content is write your article and click a button, and everything else is taken care of.

I dont think i am doing a very good job explaining myself. I have just had a horrible day of snowboarding (rolled over my neck a few times) and am in no real mood to be on the computer (god knows why I am then). So i will just let you take a look at the above posted website.

Also, there are plenty of websites out there that post pre done graphics/styles for greymatter and simmilar blogging software.

I hope you find what you are looking for.

I think volcanic is on the right track with the blogging idea - that way your uncle can just sign in and write his latest article and have it saved without needing to know any html etc

as for making it searchable you can sign up with google and have it search your site for you by adding a lil box to your site

v_Ln

First of all many thanks...In fact i dont want to have smb else do it for me i want to do it my own even if it is going to be a bit difficult...i think greymaster is what i want thanks...also valhallen can you explain me a bit what i have to do in order to have it search my site? I have found some javascripts that do a google search but i dont know if they search the whole web or just my site...if you have anything in mind tell me pls....
Thankssss!
PS:thanks again
PS2:did i thanked you?
PS3:thanks
PS4:ok i am bored now....:D
PS5:pls i will have new questions in this week so pls stay in touch with it...

I'm kind of confused aboutwhat you want, but if you're looking for scripts, I think I can help. My favorite site for finding scripts is SCRIPTZ, located at http://scriptz.com. Tave hey have scripts for just about anything you could possibly want to do on the web in a variety of languages: PHP, JavaScript, VBScript, Perl, and more plus Java, C++, C, Visual Basic, and on and on...

In your second post...are you looking for a site search engine? There are lots of good site search engines available from sites such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. I use FreeFind for my site.

I hope this helped!

The problem with Google is it dont accept most free host as a valid domain/subdomains. Googlebot/spiders will just reject to index it. If you insist of putting it to your site by altering the Google script, google will just give you a "domain not existent" result after a local search. Using redirection domains (such as .tk, .cjb.net, eu.org, .dg6.net) Googlebot/spider still will not index your site. :mad: I do know some free search engines which you could use if you want:

1. free-find - as mentioned earlier by Nielsosky13. A good tip is to put it in every page of your site. It is highly customizable colors, texts, templates, statistics etc... and fast and amazing index spiders. Lets you search within and outside your site.

2. Site Level - also a good free search engine. Lets you search within and outside your site. Yet it limits you the number of searches you could do locally.

3. PicoSearch - Pico search is the most praised free search engine. Praised by c|net, zdnet, pcworld etc...

4. Fusion Bot

If you dont want any of these remote hosted free search engines you could download some free search engine software to your server. Lot of them exists nowadays.

Still it is good to put a Google search engine in your site. Rumors say that adding a Google search engine in your site will improve your sites search engine ranking. I dont know if its true but when I added it to my site, Google finally linked to it in its searches) (after long weeks of waiting and <meta> configuring) :D

Okay, You mention that you want to have a <form></form> in your page to enter articles. You also mention that you want these articles stored and to be searchable. And lastly, you want to have some music be stored and searchable.

If your looking to do a professional job on this and do it all yourself, you are going to need to learn some databasing. I would suggest PHP and MySQL, because they are both free systems. I would write a script that would store all the articles and music in a database. By having all the information in a database, you can then easily search the database without having to use google or any other type of search engine. Just build your own search engine using MySQL.

Create a form that will allow you to enter the info, manipulate the text and format it for storage in the database, and then store it. Then later on you can have another php script recall it all based on date, or search, whichever.

When you say you want to have music searchable, how exactly is the "music" going to be stored? Is it going to be titles only? Titles and lyrics? Little bit more info needed.

Now this may sound like alot of work, and you would be right. It is alot of work. But it is the professional sollution to doing this right and not having to worry about "canned" programming.

Good luck.
xmad

Ok thanks again! Nielsosky13 i just visited freefind but the problem is that i dont want any popups or ads appearing so maybe i wont take this thanks though very much...wedjar thanks for the information i think that what ineed is a searching tool that will be on my server...so i will search on google to find one....now for google i did not understand everything you said:is there a google script i can download (for free) and what exactly is the problem? Btw the webpage will be on a server that will be up all the time (i am going to pay a company to host it)....
finally xmadness i totally agree with what you said...i am not a lamer but this period i am giving a serious effort to learn c so i dont want to mix up languages :D What i want to do exactly is to do as much as possible on my own in order to learn and in order to 'control' things as much as possible...but i will try to find a search engine program to use and not develop my own at least for now! And another question: will i have to create a database anyway, or the search program will do everything for me?...as to your question the music is just mp3...and do you know any site where i could find the particular script you mentionned? I will search again today also on my own but i dont know if i will find anything important...

I forgot sth:where should i go in order to get my domain name and what is exactly the situation? I know i will have to pay...shall i report also the ip of the server for the 'DNS' thing? Hope you understand me sorry i cannot express very well....thanks again to all of you....BYeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

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will i have to create a database anyway, or the search program will do everything for me?...

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Well, you don't have to have a database at all. But by not having a database, you may have to write each pages notes into the html by hand, and reload them on the server. I used to do this myself when I started web design. Its come so far now that I find it easier to just store everything in a databse. Especially when user input is concerned. All the users input has to be stored somewhere. You could have a script that takes the user entered info and stores it in a text file of some sort, but that is kind of messy. I guess now that I have jumped the hurdle of building custom MySQL databases, it just seems easier to me to build a database.

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as to your question the music is just mp3

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In this case having them stored in a database is not needed. You could simply have them stored in a server in perhaps a www.domain.com/mp3 folder. Then just allow people access to that folder. Now if you want to have them searchable, you will need to build some type of master list that will link to each .mp3 file. If you are the only one uploading these mp3 files, then that shouldn't be a problem because you could also manually add a link to it in the master list. But as soon as you allow others to upload files to the server, you will need to somehow add that file to the list, automatically. Once again a database would work beautifully for this.

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and do you know any site where i could find the particular script you mentionned?

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The script I was refering to would have to be hand written in PHP. You would have the PHP script do some basic authentication, user input validation, and then do an INSERT into the database.

To view the stuff in the database, you would do a SELECT [search paramater here] into the database. It would be a custom script, which in reality wouldn't be that hard to build, if you knew php. (which is very similar to C and C++).

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where should i go in order to get my domain name and what is exactly the situation?

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You can register your domain name on countless sites. Its really up to you to decide. Once you've registered simply log in to their DNS tools and you can change where it points to. Thats it.

Good luck
xmad

thank you very much xmadness! Ok i learnt a lot through this thread! I will try to find such a script...i feel a lot better now because i have many things cleared up about creating sites...i think i will do a database as it is a pretty good solution even if the only person to input information will be my uncle because it will be easier for him to upload things he want....now for the mp3s again i will be the only one to upload but i as i need them searchable i will have to create this 'master list'...if i understand well this should be a list of the links (in html format perhaps? or is this going to be just a file of links where the search-script will search?)?
thanks also for the info about dns registering!You have been of great help....:D
PS:When i will finally finish this site i will show it to you to tell me if you like it...:)

Yes the mp3 list should be normal html file containing mp3 links. Something like this:

Code:

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<ul>
  <li>Pink Floyd
    <ul>
      <li><a href='./time.mp3'>Time</a></li>
      <li><a href='./wish-you-were-here.mp3'>Wish You Were Here</a></li>
    </ul>
    </li>
</ul>

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At least I think so - don't know what thinks xmaddness:).