Re: [PHP] Cold Intermediate Programmer trying to modularize website...

Have you considered setting this up in wordpress?

On Tue, Feb 26, 2013 at 5:14 PM, Barry Smith <[email protected]> wrote:
> Yes, Jim, and "tamouse",
>
> Apologies for the length of this response.
>
> I am asking for help organizing the rewrite of the site, from a LOT of
> HTMLs that have 90% in common, containing a couple of php links to do a php
> mail form and command, and an article... to a "template-article-footer"
> format.
>
> I am having a problem visualizing how I need to proceed (from the highest
> level), so I was asking for opinions on how to organize the index.php plus
> template.php plus home.article design... at the highest level.
>
> From the sounds of it ( I didn't bother to un-zip his file) it appears that
>> he just wants to create a model template and fill in the center (the
>> 'article'?) appropriately depending upon the user's request
>
>
> That is basically the project.
>
> I have used Joomla for sites like this before, but the business owner is
> not tech-savvy (not a power-user) in the least.
>
> Setting up Joomla for her site, teaching her how to navigate Joomla to
> modify articles, and giving her the access to the articles that she wants
> access to is WAY beyond what she is capable of and REALLY overkill for this
> small website. Besides, she could destroy the whole site as Joomla admin or
> a Joomla user very easily.
>
> She wants access to some of the articles, ONLY to change the wording of
> some articles (the article on the about page and the home page, and maybe a
> "specials" page yet to be designed) but I am trying not to giving her the
> ability to destroy the whole site because she has access to.  I want to
> place .article files in a folder, and let her work on the articles.  I can
> build a default article into the PHP if the document that she edits gets
> deleted.  Yet she's a smart business owner... "if i have access to the
> articles to change them and I mess up, I don't want the website to
> disappear" was how she expressed it to me.
>
> The other wrinkle (at a programming level) is that she wants a header in
> every email that the website sends to the company, to track which link was
> clicked.
>
> I'm thinking that (as an example of the changes that I need to make to the
> files contained in the zip )--
>
> I. index.html would "require" index.php.
> 1) index.php would define variables for that page, i.e. a var
> building="index" or "about" or "services" or "products", and then include
> "template.php", a home.article file, and a footer.php .
> 2) template.php would use the "building" value to build each custom header
> and left column and right column. Within the header, it would use the
> variable "building" to send a label that identifies "building" and another
> value "header" to "contact.php" (see more about "contact.php" later).
> Programatically, template.php will highlight tab buttons at the top of the
> page (if they need to be highlighted) and menu buttons in left column (if
> they need to be highlighted) dependent on the value of "building", and in
> column 2 choose the correct list of buttons to display in a vendor list
> dependent on the value of "building".
> 3) footer.php would use the "building" value to build each custom footer
> for the page.  Within the footer, it would use the variable "building" to
> send a label that identifies "building" and another value "footer" to
> "contact.php" (see more about "contact.php" later).
>
> II. contact.php will bring up an email form, use the label passed in to
> create a custom header to insert into the php mail command/function.
>
> III/IV/V/VI. Each HTML in the site will have an associated php that calls
> template, grabs any appropriate .article file, calls footer.
>
> Does that structure make sense?
>
> Are there gotchas, things to "verify" and "watch out for" that you have run
> into doing similar projects?
>
> As a past for this design procedure, I worked on a "sales agent" site years
> ago that did a similar "build each page dependent on logged.in.user" ...
> but the control for this project is not logged.in.user in this project...
> the control is page.being.built .
>
> Thank you for the input, and any links to online articles that I should
> probably read, or topics that I should make sure I understand completely in
> php.
>
> Peace,
> --
> Barry Smith
> c 704-497-4217
> e [email protected]