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developing admin pages - please help

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treebean

IS-IT--Management
Feb 24, 2002
23
US
I originally posted this question in the wrong forum. I apologize but I still need help with the question.

Question: A common request from clients is the ability to update and make changes their sites inhouse. What is the best (and easiest, least expensive) way to develop an interface and manage administration pages so clients able (i.e., permitted) do site maintenance/content updates themselves [involving changing HTML pages for a Web site]. I basically need to get a brief overview of how to do this. What type of scripting and database functionality is required? Do you recommend giving the client FTP rights [password/userid] to upload changes or are all updates pulled from the database? Below is a summary of what I've gathered so far. Please provide comments / suggestions on the most efficient method of building such an application / engine. Or, provide any links or web resources to additional information (e.g., sample code) on the subject. Thanks.

Answer to date: Assuming that administering the site just means changing the HTML pages for the site, a simple FTP mechanism would work. This means that the FTP login would give them control of changing the source (be it HTML/JSP/etc.). Using JSP this situation could become a lot more flexible/complex. Assuming a standard Servlet Engine like Tomcat, then you would have all of the flexibility of Java, and could write a bean which would then store login information (or hardcode them), in a database and retrieve for authentication, and write some functions to display and modify those source files. In this case the bean could control access to the site, and would handle all of the file modification stuff in the background. Something as simple as a JSP, that you'd have to log into, that displayed a selected source file, allows them to modify the source and then paste the completed source back into a form. From here, have the bean within the JSP, write over the existing source file. With a JSP you could automate some of these updates, depending on the design. All of this depends on the underlying platform and source files. Lots of possibilities.
 
The easiest way is to use a combonation of ACCESS database and Coldfusion...
This what we did at my job:

1...Created a Access database with the right fields (like userID, userPW, etc)...

2..Using Coldfusion, we created a .cfm page (which is exactly like an .HTML file, except that .cfm pages have SQL coding...this coding what allows the authorized ppl. to update, maintain site)...

3...You can either let Coldfusion do the coding (and then you fix it up) or you can code yourself (which is much, much easier to do)...

4...Then you post on the net...easy as that!! The only thing you have to worry is of your allowed to have .cfm, .mdb files uploaded...


An example of SQL would be:
SELECT userID
FROM myDatabase
Where #fieldNAME# EQ userID

Its kinda simple and all...and its even easier to maintain in case of any problems...(tek-tips uses coldfusion also)... I have not failed; I merely found 100,000 different ways of not succeding...
 
I have had a lot of success with site by programming them in PHP and using a MySQL back end database for support. essentially, it works the same way as cold fusion. Also the same as a lot of ASP pages, etc.

There are a number of PHP and mySQL tutorials available on the internet. Because PHP is an open source language, it seems to be generally easier to use and learn than others like Cold Fusion and ASP. But, thats just my opinion.

phpbuilder.com is an excellent place to start.
 
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