posted
Say I wanted to get a bibliography online. Say it was going to be extensive (in the hundreds of items, eventually), and it needed to be searchable by all of the fields you'd find in a Chicago-style citation, plus a few extra for subject matter. Sort of like a library system, I guess.
Say I have university-sponsored webspace, and a decent knowledge of HTML.
What other language or program would I need to take a course on to get something like this running? I would google it, but I don't even know where to start. The university offers IT courses and should be able to help me, but this is a big leap for me.
Posts: 2849 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
You would want to learn either PHP or ASP, VBScript or JavaScript, and some basic SQL database administration.
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I would not advise trying to do this all by yourself, though you might try to do the main work with a mentor of sorts. Without someone keeping an eye on things you will likely make mistakes that will hurt you later (as in, allow your application to be compromised).
Who are the intended users?
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Medieval disability scholars, primarily. It seemed like such a great idea when I thought of it, and then I realised how much learning it would require. The university provides "Interbase Database Service," but they're remarkably unclear about what exactly that IS.
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posted
Interbase is a database. It would be one option for something to put your data in, though you would need to write code to access it.
I see a few principal options:
Write your own system.
Manage the bibliography in a program intended for doing such, and export to static HTML.
Maintain the bibliography in static HTML with thorough indexes.
Create an eprints ( http://www.eprints.org/ ) repository. This would require rather more capabilities than you likely have for webspace, but you could perhaps get your department interested.
Use Drupal with the Bibliography module: http://drupal.org/project/biblio . That would require a database supported by Drupal, and you'd probably want to customize the look and feel some, but it is very capable.
(edit: and the reason they don't explain what interbase is is, if it is useful to you, you should already know).
posted
I guess for the time being it will be static HTML, but I will take the options you mentioned to the Computer Services people and get their take. I kind of see this as a career-long project, so I'll probably get it more high-tech eventually. Besides, I like learning new things, and now I have a reason. Posts: 2849 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
Be warned that the computer services people you talk to might not know squat about practical web application issues, even as far as what's allowed/possible/common on your institution's infrastructure. Someone does, of course, but front line IT staff usually don't.
If you're interested in learning some of the things that would be involved in doing this 'right', I'll start posting brief bits of info on them.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
So on my to-do list: Be a pest at the CS. A polite pest, but a determined one.
I'm definitely interested in knowing what's involved, but I may not have the chance to act on it right away. Plus, I feel bad taking up any more of your time than it takes to post "You're in over your head."
1. A programming language. While it makes a certain amount of sense to use a language supported by your basic student hosting, that usually means PHP, and PHP is a painful language that encourages bad practices. It also has relatively bad frameworks, see next item. I prefer Python, by far, which is also a good 'first language'.
2. A modern web framework. Building a site from scratch is not a good idea. There are web frameworks that make painful things relatively painless, particularly for the simple sort of content-oriented site you're contemplating. In Python, I would probably choose Django for such a site. In Ruby I would choose Ruby on Rails. There are other examples, but those are two of the biggest players. PHP has a few frameworks in this direction, though I don't like them as much: CakePHP and Symfony (the latter requires PHP5, which you might not have available).
3. A search library. If you want to do real search, you need this. That means Lucene (or a port thereof). An alternative would be to use Solr, which is a search server using Lucene, but that's an even heavier solution. Now, with a few hundred items, you might not need real search. A basic full text search should be fine. People will be able to combinatorial searches visually, as the resultset for the term they are interested in that has the smallest coverage should be easily scannable.
I could whip out the basics of such a site in a few hours, though it would have only the most basic of search, probably using postgresql's full text search capabilities. It would run on Python using Django. Unfortunately, that's probably not a setup you have available.
If you're interested in using something other than what your webhosting makes available (and if you're lucky, it will be possible to do Django or somesuch on it), then you'll need a personal webhost. Provided you know what technology you're interested in, you'll be able to provide a host that can do it for around $100 a year or less.
Btw, Django isn't my favorite Python web framework (Turbogears is), but Turbogears is more appropriate for more complicated web applications, and Django makes it extraordinarily easy to do certain sorts of information-oriented sites.
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posted
I'm definitely in over my head, but now I at least know what terms to go google to look for further info so I can actually ask intelligent questions. Unless you know of any tutorial sites.
Thank you a lot for the advice.
Posts: 2849 | Registered: Feb 2002
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After you're familiar with writing basic python programs, I'd head over to the django website: http://www.djangoproject.com/documentation/ . The tutorial and the book linked there are both pretty good.
If you've never programmed before at all, I'd guesstimate you could be ready to take a stab at the site in two or three months, if you devoted a decent amount of time to learning. You'd probably do a lot of things wrong, but you could probably get them working, with trial and error and help.
I suspect you'll have an easier time picking up programming than some, given your comment about learning languages by grammar.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
I really do like learning via grammar. I figure if I can master Latin, I can at least get to an acceptable competency at this.
Haha, they taught us Turing in my Intro to Computers class. So no, I've never programmed before. Thanks for the links!
Posts: 2849 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
That's because Python rules. It is the only language with such broad appeal that it brings together Google and Microsoft.
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