HTML, XHTML and CSS All-In-One for Dummies - Andy Harris [331]
You can see from Figure 1-18 that phpMyAdmin is somewhat familiar if you read Book VI. Often, public servers remove the Privileges section because you aren’t logged in as root. Everything else is basically the same. See Book VI for details on how to use phpMyAdmin to work with your databases.
Finding the MySQL server name
Throughout Book VI, I assume that the MySQL server is on the same physical machine as the Web server. This situation is common in XAMPP installations, but commercial servers often have separate servers for data. You may have to dig through the documentation or find a Server Statistics section to discover how your PHP programs should refer to your server.
By far the biggest problem when moving your programs to a remote server is figuring out the new connection. Make sure that you know the right combination of server name, username, and password. Test on a simple PHP application before working on a complex one.
Chapter 2: Planning Your Sites
In This Chapter
Planning multipage Web sites
Working with the client
Analyzing the audience
Building a site plan
Creating XHTML and CSS templates
Fleshing out the project
At some point, your Web efforts begin to grow. Rather than think about single Web documents, you begin to build more complex systems. Most real-life Web problems require a lot more than a single page to do the work. How do you make the transition to a site with many different but interconnected pages? How do you think through the process of creating a site that serves a specific purpose?
You might even be thinking about doing commercial Web development work. If so, it’s definitely time to think about how to put together a plan for a customer.
Creating a Multipage Web Site
A complete Web site has these characteristics:
♦ A consistent theme: All the pages in a Web site should be about something — a product, a shop, a hobby. It doesn’t matter much what the theme is, but the pages should be unified around it.
♦ Consistent design: The site should have a unified color scheme. All pages should have the same (or similar) layout, and the font choices and images should all use a similar style.
♦ A navigation scheme: Users must have a clear method to move around from page to page. The organization of the pages and their relationships should be clear.
♦ A common address: Normally, all pages in a site are on the same server and have a common DNS name so that they’re easy to distinguish.
Obviously, the skills of Web design are critical to building a Web site, but a broader skill set is required when creating something larger than individual pages.
If you’re starting to build a more complicated Web site, you need to have a plan, or else you won’t succeed. This plan is even more important if you’re building a site for somebody else.
Planning a Larger Site
Here are some questions you need to ask yourself when designing a larger Web site:
♦ What’s the point of the site? The site doesn’t have to be serious, but it does have to have a theme. If you don’t know what your site is about, neither do your users (and they’ll leave in a hurry).
♦ Who am I talking to? Web sites are a form of communication, and you can’t communicate well if you don’t understand your audience. Who is the primary target audience for this site?
♦ Which resources do I have available? Resources involve a lot more than money (but it helps). How much time do you have? Do you have access to a solid technical framework? Can you get help if you need it? Do you have all the copy and raw materials?
♦ What am I trying to say? Believe it or not, this question often poses a huge problem. Somebody says, “I need a Web site.” When you ask what she wants on the site, she says, “Oh, lots of things.” When you try to pin down the answers, though, people