How to Build a Database Driven Web
- 1). Scope out the site categories for your website, including the primary navigation points. Keep this simple and clear.
- 2). Organize your content into separate text documents for each section with clear headlines, sub-heads and sub-categories.
- 3). Design your website using an HTML editor or hire a Web designer to complete the process. Usually, the mock-up design is completed in a graphic design program before being sliced and diced into HTML sections.
- 4). Draw out the primary relationships between the various categories and their sub-categories. In the database world, this is referred to as modeling data "relationships." For instance, if your business model is selling books, the relationship between author and book would be termed a "many-to-many" relationship. Thus, one author may write many books; one book may be written by many authors.
- 5). Buy or download a trial version of a database software package. Your decision will be based on the number of records you decide to keep in the database and by how quickly you project your site to grow.
- 6). Set up your database by creating "Tables," assigning "Table Names" and listing all "Fields" necessary to each table. If necessary, create a "Foreign Key," which defines a relationship to another table in your database. Copy the information from your text documents to save time.
- 7). Build queries or "stored procedures" to speed up custom views of your database. This will aid programming performance later on.
- 8). Choose a programming language to data-mine your database and output the content to your HTML pages. If necessary, hire a computer programmer to complete the task.
- 9). Upload your HTML pages, programming code and database to your hosting provider via FTP. Take the further step of building administrative pages to allow you to update your database online. As data changes in your database, it will automatically be streamed through to the front end.