posted
Quick background: I'm working for a small-town business that is having me do websites for the gallery and pharmacy they own. (The pharmacy site is easy - I plug stuff into some corporate program and people buy drugs) They assume that since I know how put pictures on the internet I know what I'm doing. I don't. Mostly that's OK because everyone else in town knows less than me.
What I'm trying to do: I want to have all of our artwork available online without having to make a separate html file for each page. I'm vaguely aware of the existence of database technology where you make one page and have it get the necessary information (picture, title, dimensions) from your database.
What I need: I've found all kinds of helpful tutorials online, but I don't know what any of them mean. What is SQL? What is ASP? What do I need to be tutorialling myself to do?
Edit: also, I do my designing in Dreamweaver and the page of which I'm speaking is located here.
posted
"What I need: I've found all kinds of helpful tutorials online, but I don't know what any of them mean. What is SQL? What is ASP? What do I need to be tutorialling myself to do?"
These are surprisingly easy to install, assuming your server supports either ASP or PHP. Most freeware image galleries use one of the two formats.
I believe both foobonic and my own gallery use a PHP-based product. Since I don't have access to my server the way foobonic does, I had to find a product that supported the specific version of PHP -- with the specific security privileges I had -- available from my webhost.
In general, there are a number of "out-of-the-box" solutions that'll work fine if you have control of your own server.
Both ASP and PHP are fairly simple scripting languages. The former is more common on Windows machines, while the latter is more common on UNIX boxes. With the appropriate installations, however, either can run on either platform.
(Incidentally, one of the most common PHP-based image gallery packages out there is called Gallery. While it won't work on my server due to the security context, you may find that it's a fairly easy install on any box you control.)
posted
Why did you change your original Sacajawea web site design, Annie? I loved it the way it was with the statue of her and the darker background. Did they not like it that way?
Farmgirl
(I'll let Fugu answer your database/web connection question) Edit: or Tom!
posted
For what you're doing, it's quite possible that there will be samples out there that you can manipulate to do what you want without really knowing what they're doing (that's half of real programming anyways ). I think I'll let the realy web-gurus here go on, but really what you should be looking for is not an in depth knolwedge of this stuff, but enough of an overview and just a few of the technical details that you can change a couple variables to make an example program work for you.
Of course in your buisness it would probably be a real bonus to know one or two of these langauges/platforms/standards, but just a few months before you mission probably isn't the ideal time to begin learning that.
posted
OK, fine, like 50 people can respond while I'm typing.
I know some php and can help you fiddle with stuff a bit, there's probably a lot of Perl code out there too if only because that's been around for a while; that can be a little tougher to use just because it's less like the english language than something like PHP (I have no ASP experience).
posted
Farmgirl: because I was sick of it. Also, my mom (the gallery sales director) has been leaning towards getting out of the historical Lewis & Clark market and into the contemporary Native American market. We're hoping is we can get a good web presence we can start appealing to a national market - a lot of the artists we represent have a hard time getting recognized outside of the Indian crafts sphere.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
Annie, I think you'll find that most web developers consider a knowledge of both ASP and PHP to be essential skills. You can achieve your goals with either, and you won't be wasting the time you'd spend playing with either language.
That said, I think there are better freeware gallery apps out there for PHP than for ASP. If you're comfortable with Visual Basic or are on a Windows server, consider ASP; otherwise, look into a PHP gallery (like, say, Gallery.)
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
There are also good tutorials on Dreamweaver, which does all of the work for you anyway, and I'm planning on doing the plug-in type of design here. Unfortunately, I don't know what the titles of any of those tutorials mean.
Also - do I need Microsoft Access to do this? I think the ancient PC I have here in the office has Access, but on my Mac all I've got is Word. I could always type up the database file on the other machine, though.
Heh. And do I have to know anything about Access? I used it in my job for the French Review, but I just plugged things in and out of fields.
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posted
I'd also like to take this moment of supreme frustration to shed a silent tear for the decline of the print industry. I'm a print designer, dagnabbit!
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posted
I'd agree that PHP is probably the way to go, and I agree knowing PHP is a good idea for your fuure career I just really don't think now is the ideal time to try to learn more than a spattering of it. Of course you have to decide that.
posted
*reiterates offer: if people want some custom programming work done, I'll do it in exchange for (low amounts of) money or creative work (a nice print or two of a good size of your original artwork, for instance)*
While I encourage people to learn about PHP, ASP, and SQL, for others' business sites it is irresponsible to do work if one is not reasonably adept; one should use a turnkey app (such as Gallery) or hire someone who is adept. This is not saying newbies are bad, this is saying that there is serious damage that could result from one unfamiliar doing the work, such as business-hurting defacements, or an error ending in loss of important data.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
"Also - do I need Microsoft Access to do this?"
You'll need a database of some kind. PHP builds traditionally use something called MySQL, which is a free SQL-based database; Access is also a SQL-compliant database, and will work equally well for this purpose. Since you won't be doing any direct data entry into the database itself -- most of these galleries support a web-based front-end that enters the data for you -- your major concern will be installing the database and making sure it's secured correctly. There are lots of tutorials out there on how to do this for both Access and MySQL, since both are very popular back-end DBs.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
While Access is compliant with basic SQL, the more important compliance is ACID compliance, which Access is terrible at.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Fugu, that sounds very wise. I think I shall mess around with Gallery a bit and if it's still not helping me do what I want, I'll get in touch with you. I can't do the money thing (heck, I have a hard enough time convincing them to pay for a website at all), but I might work out an artwork exchange with you. Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
"While Access is compliant with basic SQL, the more important compliance is ACID compliance, which Access is terrible at."
In fairness, Russell, ACID is completely irrelevant to what she actually wants to do, although it may well be relevant to what she should want to do. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
What I should want is very noble, but I think my utter ignorance here should be my main driving factor. Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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Lets go with Access is far too likely to result in corrupt data, plus being too darn slow to run a webapp without heavy caching.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Oh, Annie, did you want info on the teaching english in germany thing? The pay is actually quite good, email me if you're interested.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Do you have to speak German? Because all I know is "computers are stupid" and a never-ending story.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
*grin* Well, I'm not sure how likely it is that she's really going to bump up against Access' performance limitations in a gallery of this size -- where, after all, it'd probably all wind up cached on any standard IIS box anyway. But I agree that I certainly don't use Access as a back-end database for anything, preferring either MSSQL or MySQL depending on the platform. Access gets used because most people already own it, don't want to mess with figuring out how to set up a GUI for MySQL (mainly due to ignorance), and/or require Office integration.
In Annie's case, I think the combo of MySQL and Gallery would be a good learning experience. I agree, though, that "learning" on her mom's webpage brings with it certain attendant risks, especially if they're intending ecommerce.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Wow. If I weren't missionarying in a few months, I'd totally look into it. I'll still teach you the neve-ending story if you like.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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Your choice may be limited by the answer to a question Tom asked, but you never answered: do you have your own server or do you have a hosting service?
Most (good) hosting services support a variety of PHP databases -- including MySQL and MSACCESS.
Find out what your server can support and that may narrow your choices somewhat of what type of gallery packages you can work with.
Posts: 3423 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
Annie -- you have MySQL and PHP available (and others, but for purposes of installing turnkey apps that's the most likely relevant stuff).
There is also Python, which I would recommend as a place to start learning web programming far and above PHP.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
I am on 1and1 as well and I have gallery installed. It was pretty easy to set up following a guide on the site. I just use it for a photo album for friends and family. I am a programmer but I don't remember having to do any real programming to get this set up. It was about a year ago though, and my memory is pretty dodgy lately.
Posts: 1336 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
I just checked my bookmarks and found a site that I used as a reference when customizing my gallery install. It has some tutorial stuff that you might be interested in. Here is the link .
Posts: 1336 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote:While Access is compliant with basic SQL, the more important compliance is ACID compliance, which Access is terrible at.
Access has had ACID transactions far longer than MySQL has, and it's very reliable. That said, it sucks for web pages for other reasons, mainly related to concurrancy and blockage. So fugu's suggestion to avoid Access for this app is sound. His reason isn't correct, though.
He's also right that you should not be coding in a scripting language for a customer at this point.
Dagonee Edit: OK, it does lack ACIDity when used over a network with the DB on a file server, but in this case it wouldn't be, since the code would run on the same box as the MDB file is stored on.
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