[web] Weblog, webblog, blog... best ways?
Author
Hello -
First off, this is my first post, and I wanted to congratulate Gamedev for keeping me occupied with threads and articles for more than 5 minutes. Sadly, this is the only website in the world that has accomplished that task, and this is the first forum board I've ever signed up for.
Secondly, Im interested in creating a website which would include a weblog of a developing creation for a game. This weblog will be the evolution of my final game with some creation of smaller games on the way. I will need some way of documenting this extraordinary feat (right)[grin].I'd like to ask a few questions:
1. Whats the best way, or language, to create a robust website such that there is a form that can be used to update certain section, and has a reusability to be used in other sections for the website (with extreme formatting differences) say news, games, movie sections each with different colors, fonts, etc. but with the same instances of a form that (with minimal change) will format the text accordingly to each instance.
2. What are the mechanics behind building such a form, and how does it incorporate within a webserver, html and xml files? I have plenty of experience with HTML, CSS, and programming (CE student at RIT), but I have failed to grasp these concepts. I don't even know where to start.
--The plan here is to be able to link to my site and have people post replies and suggestions using visible examples from my site to and to answer questions I have. This will further my knowledge with computer games, and leave documentation of my evolution from a true n00b to glorified computer aficianado. --
Any help, flame, or general comment will be widely accepted, on a final note - I'd really like to build everything from scratch to help me with my general understanding of "everything" [lol]
Thanks in advance,
~M
Your first question makes it sound like you want a content management system. Having said that, what you said is a bit vague. I don't think you'd re-use a single form for several different sections. Instead you'd probably have a form for each one as creating the form itself is not the hard part; managing the data and dynamically producing the page on demand is the hard part.
In answer to your second question; the form is just a bit of HTML, and is the trivial part of the equation since it will take a few minutes to create and doesn't actually do anything significant. The hard part is writing the code that runs on the server, and handles the data that the form sends to it. In a nutshell, here's the procedure:
- User enters data into an HTML form, and hits submit
- The browser sends the data to a page on the server as a POST request
- Code on the server (typically an ASP or PHP page, but could be one of any number of other technologies) parses this data and stores it in a database.
- Subsequent pages requested by the browser are also handled by the server-side code, which accesses the database to retrieve the content to display as part of the HTML sent to the browser.
For this, you'll need a web server that supports scripting of some sort and which gives you database access (or allows you to write files locally), and you will probably need to learn one of the many web languages available.
In answer to your second question; the form is just a bit of HTML, and is the trivial part of the equation since it will take a few minutes to create and doesn't actually do anything significant. The hard part is writing the code that runs on the server, and handles the data that the form sends to it. In a nutshell, here's the procedure:
- User enters data into an HTML form, and hits submit
- The browser sends the data to a page on the server as a POST request
- Code on the server (typically an ASP or PHP page, but could be one of any number of other technologies) parses this data and stores it in a database.
- Subsequent pages requested by the browser are also handled by the server-side code, which accesses the database to retrieve the content to display as part of the HTML sent to the browser.
For this, you'll need a web server that supports scripting of some sort and which gives you database access (or allows you to write files locally), and you will probably need to learn one of the many web languages available.
It's pretty much as Kylotan said - you need a basic CMS.
If you look at the news page on my Manta-X site, that's a basic example of the weblog.
It's simply a single table in a mySQL database (could be SQL server, access or even XML) that holds the posted date, the ID of the post (AUTO_INCREMENT), the author's name, the title of the news item and then the news body.
To enter news, I log in using my own private url and enter the relevent information into a HTML form. This form is then HTTP/POST sent to the server which is processed by an ASP script. The script then forms the correct SQL string and posts the news into the database.
Retreiving the news is a simple case of querying the news and putting into a web page. My current implementation is more complex that this, using the query to build an XML file and then transform it for viewing with XSLT - but it still follows the same principle.
Here's a few links you may find useful:
ASP Web Portal and Content Management System - EzyEdit
Assorted ready-to-go blog scripts from HotScripts
ASP Guestbook Sample - Follows the same principles...
Content Management Made easy with ASP
That should keep you going for now.
If you look at the news page on my Manta-X site, that's a basic example of the weblog.
It's simply a single table in a mySQL database (could be SQL server, access or even XML) that holds the posted date, the ID of the post (AUTO_INCREMENT), the author's name, the title of the news item and then the news body.
To enter news, I log in using my own private url and enter the relevent information into a HTML form. This form is then HTTP/POST sent to the server which is processed by an ASP script. The script then forms the correct SQL string and posts the news into the database.
Retreiving the news is a simple case of querying the news and putting into a web page. My current implementation is more complex that this, using the query to build an XML file and then transform it for viewing with XSLT - but it still follows the same principle.
Here's a few links you may find useful:
ASP Web Portal and Content Management System - EzyEdit
Assorted ready-to-go blog scripts from HotScripts
ASP Guestbook Sample - Follows the same principles...
Content Management Made easy with ASP
That should keep you going for now.
Perl is a language rather than a program. You use Perl to write programs. Perl is very good for text manipulation, which is why it is often used on webservers for handling simple websites, but it's also got a steep learning curve and is considered a little messy compared to the alternatives. It's certainly capable of doing what you want, but it may not be the best choice (if indeed you have one).
Author
My apologies for not reading what I wrote, I meant to say "programming language" or "language" and it came out "program". Thank you for the reply.
How would a database help what Id like to do?
~M
How would a database help what Id like to do?
~M
Author
Can anyone link me to tutorials that are specific for PERL and CGI programming. Including the basics of how the server communicates with the script, and how databases can be combined together to produce what I'd like?
Thanks,
~M
**edit -
maybe something similar to - this but it doesn't talk much about databases, if at all.
Thanks,
~M
**edit -
maybe something similar to - this but it doesn't talk much about databases, if at all.
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