admin

I am looking for some Windows based software to allow me to build MySQL/PHP driven websites.

I found :
Database driven PHP web site with no programming

Which seems OK, has anyone used it?

What alternatives are there?

Thanks

Admin

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Skinner

I'm a PHP/MySql Developer, alot of those automatic php/database programs, create nasty databases with masses of redundant data which makes future queries unworkable.

They are also limited by their programmers forethought, kinda like buying a smartcar and wondering why you can't fit 4 people in it. Majority of them, I'd heard about and read about don't handle joins very well, they virtually don't do regex.

Database Software | PHP MySQL (PHPMagic) is another one.

If its a specific task, it maybe better for you to visit rentacoder or scriptlance and buy in what you need, or find someone you can trade with, to make the basics for you.

Skinner

oh one more thing, when defining your schema for the databases, use prefixes as it will save the hair on your head, for example

table domain
-id
-name
-reg
-exp
-price

table buyer
-id
-name
-email
-tel

table registrar
-id
-name
-website

When you come to work with that, you will end up mixing name and id up for certain, and if you do manage to get software that will do a join, you will have to alias each one, and most software that can do joins odds on, won't have automatic alias ability.

You really should use more like


table domain
-dom_id
-dom_name
-dom_reg
-dom_exp
-dom_price

table buyer
-buy_id
-buy_name
-buy_email
-buy_tel

table registrar
-reg_id
-reg_name
-reg_website

Makes it easy to track and use your data, also makes it easier to expand once you know some php/mysql

(sorry after thought post).

monaghan

After 20 or so years working with databases (and looking / optimizing other people's work), unless you are just doing a very simple list into a table, you really need to be designing your database properly and understand a bit about how databases work.

I had a customer recently who was considering a dedicated server for his system as it was so slow, after a few hours consultancy he's now running this on a shared hosting server and handling more than twice the workload and has almost zero impact on the server.

Badly written database applications will quickly get your account noticed by the system admin

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admin

Thank's for the input.

All I'm really trying to do is speed up the process as my knowledge and time are both limited.

So you code PHP sites by hand?

Admin

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Skinner

I personally write the bulk of my raw php in zend studio (Zend Studio - The Leading PHP IDE from the PHP Experts - Zend.com), if it need it to look pretty I use dreamweaver (Adobe - Dreamweaver CS3, Web Site Design, Web Page Design, Web Design Software).

I have been known (man I'm gonna look like such a geek), to edit PHP using the notepad/jotter feature on my mobile phone (p910i) by ftp'ing into the server to correct some code while, I was away from home for a week ago.

Puritans will say use vi or notepad or some other crap, but a little help never hurt anyone, and syntax highlighting is worth its weight in gold at times.

Jeewhizz

All our PHP code is done by hand as well. We use the Zend studio suite as well - it's very nice

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Skinner

The only thing, I miss in Zend is the WYSIWYG view that dreamweaver offers in split view.

Amazing is the word for zend studio

monaghan

Anything with a colour coded editor is good, something that will match your "{"'s can help find things when you can't why the wrong bit of code is executing.

As you build things you can then build into a library and re-use next time to save time, after a few similiar sites, the you'll soon have a shopping list of data tables and code routines to pull together.

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tifosi

Amen to that...

First rule of database work... 'thou must normalise thy database to the 3rd normal'
Second rule of database work... 'If you don't understand rule 1, then find out why'.

I still use gVim - with a custom theme - for all my development work. But that's because I am a geek! and learned programming on it. I use a localhost install to check functionality. WAMP is good. Highly recommended as a local test environment.

Never got used to wsywig, but been told dreamweaver is the industry standard.

S