html forms

[teedoff]

Hi I have a static site that I would like to create a template for. The template would serve as a way for the owner of the site to enter data such as text areas, headings, titles, metatags, and most anything that may be different from page to page. Then when the submit button is clicked, the data is then sent to another page and inserted within <p> tags, heading tags, titles, and metatags. I hope I explained this well enough.

I know I can do this with cfm templates, but I wondered if this can be done with just strict html. Thanks for any help!

[JRM]

why not use a CMS like Drupal or Joomla?

[teedoff]

Well I had thought about wordpress. I dont know enough about any of those though. I do use dreamweaver and some text editors and am currently creating a new website to run parallel with his current site eventually. His site now is all html and all table layouts. I was hoping to at least create a template for him to use that would make it easier on him, and on me as well. As he is adding new pages and new products, I need to track them and have the new products added to the database.

The new site is CF, so for that matter I could just build a cfm template he could use. The problem with that is, right now his provider doesnt support CF. We will eventually move his and the new site to a hosting company that does.

Sorry for the long reply, just trying to figure out the best and quickest way to solve this and make things much easier.

Thanks for the help!

[trustedweb]

The question is, how do you want to store the data? If I understand you correctly, you want your client to be able to edit their website content - if that's correct, then you need to decide where and how that data (the content of each page) is going to be stored and accessed.

Depending on the hosting company (whether they support PHP or ASP) I would suggest using one of those and either saving data to a database or text file (since it's temporary).

The other option it to make it XML based.

But honestly, it may be easier and quicker to create a WordPress theme based on the current design, and just copy and paste each page content.

[JRM]

I don't know how others feel about it,but I try to avoid proprietary systems like the plague. I have trouble getting adobe flash to work right on firefox. What if some people don't have it at all?

My personal philosophy is to design a site so that it will still work for the majority of visitors. I only use JS as "window dressing" , not for any critical core functionality. Also, the more overhead you have, the slower the site will load.

I've gone to some "overdone' sites that first thing you see is the "loading" indicator. They take 30 seconds to load on a DSL! Who cares? I'm gone!

BTW what is required from the hosting company to support CF? just curious...

[teedoff]

JRM, proprietary systems as in which ones? lol Not sure what you're referring to.

The fact is, his current site is very VERY basic. no style sheets so to speak. I mean basically its a page full of text and a couple of images, all laid out in a table format. So basically all I wanted to to was create a form to enter text, then when the submit button was clicked, the page would pass all the form fields onver to another page and insert each form in their respective html tags. One form field could be:

<input type="text" name="title">

Then of course the text entered there would fill in the <title> tag.

Another form field could be named "description", which would insert the text into a table row where the product description could go.

His site really is very simply made, but tedious to update and manage. Which is why I wanted this quick solution for now. Like I said, eventually I hope to migrate everything to the new site I am working on. But until then I have 10's of thousands of products to add to the database lol. And each day he adds more! See my quandary?

JRM, a site that supports coldfusion must have the coldfusion server installed. Sorry, maybe my use of CF wasnt clear..lol

Also Trustesweb mentioned using PHP and MySQL. I am using MySQL now with Coldfusion. I really dont want to desing another page using another server side language. lol

Again, the intitial question was: can an html page pass forms data to another html page, insert that data to the second page AND to a data base. Im thinking more now that it's not possible. I think I didn't explain it very well in my intital post though. Sorry, and thanks for all the help!

[JRM]

JRM, proprietary systems as in which ones? lol Not sure what you're referring to. JRM, a site that supports coldfusion must have the coldfusion server installed. Sorry, maybe my use of CF wasnt clear..lol

That's one of the issues, you must install THEIR server, for example.
They keep sucking you in with this requirement or another. Then , after you have investing time and effort into using thier proprietary product, they will make an incompatible upgrade version they you will have to purchase in the future. It's like Microsoft and their proprietary games. It's crack for webmasters.

The more "generic" you are, the less problems you will have finding hosting companies and reaching the largest audience, IHO.

I mean, really, is cold fusion worth putting all of your eggs in their basket?
I'm sure that server licence costs a bundle, thus higher hosting fees.

Also Trustesweb mentioned using PHP and MySQL. I am using MySQL now with Coldfusion. I really dont want to desing another page using another server side language. lol

What's wrong with PHP?

[teedoff]

What's wrong with PHP?

Nothings wrong with it...lol I just dont know it yet. I am taking classes in PHP presently.

I will agree that being more "generic" is the best approach when trying to reach a target audience, however, PHP is only readily available because its free. I wish CF was free! lol, and if it were, I would probably say it would be much more popular than PHP simply because of the ease of use and that fact that its tag based and looks very much like htmml.

I will point out that even though CF is proprietary and costs, The only extra costs is in the hosting provider fees. Sometimes, not always, the hosting provider will charge more because they have had to purchase and install CF servers on their server machines. Now, to develop CF pages locally, I use the free CF server, which is fully functional and designed for that purpose. If we were to host our site in house, then yes we'd be looking at about $1000 for a CF server install.

I will point out though, that so far I still like CF better. lol I can do in one line of code what it takes much, much more coding to accomplish in PHP. Just yesterday I was trying to complete a coin calculator in PHP for class. lol For example here is the same code for PHP versus CF:

CF first

<cfoutput>#dollarFormat(rsDetails.price)#</cfoutput>

PHP to do the same thing:

function moneyFormat($value) {
return '$'.number_format($value, 2, '.', ',');
}

echo moneyFormat($totalCents/100);

Now I am not bashing one or the other...lol Just pointing out the differences in the two. The above codes do the same thing, which is format a variable to currency.

Anyway, I have no issue using PHP, as I said. I dont want to redesign an entire CF site to it though. lol Thanks for the help again!

[teedoff]

A web designer's ultimate aim for a website's design is to achieve a balance between its attractiveness (targeted look-and-feel with necessary design effects), load time considerations (optimizing design elements for website size) and user friendliness (easy-to-use navigation and well laid-out easily readable content) - without entirely compromising on either of them. Between the extremes of making bare designs with cluttered content and hard-to-navigate complex designs, a professional web designer needs to learn to expertly create a web design that is impressive, cohesive, well laid out, fast-loading and easy to use. On the programming front, no compromise must be made in creating a well coded and error free website that ensures a uniform user experience - web standards compliant (valid XHTML/CSS), accessible and cross browser compatible.
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Hmmm ok thanks for the lesson in web design..lol that doesn't have anything to do with my initial question.