My company are looking to extend the range of our site by creating databases containing Travel Stories and Images from all over the world - Seperately. One for the Travel Stories, and one for the Images.

Can anyone recommend how these should be created? Is there any software available that would make creation and maintenance of the database easy enough for a novice to use?

Would this project be best undertaken with PHP + MySQL, or would it be better to stick to the good ol' html page setup?

thankx in advance...

phpMyAdmin manages databases and stuff.
you are going to need to have apache, MySQL, and PHP4 though.

www.phpmyadmin.com I believe it is.

Images could probably be done with a simple image gallery script, stories would need a more complex CMS.

It all depends on volume and source, though. If you are only going to have 10/20 of each, HTML is probably best.

If you are looking to have users submit pictures and stories, or are planning on having a lot, PHP/MySQL is the way to go.

If you ever need anyone to make some more custom systems.....

Thankx guys,

we are hoping to build this into a long-standing feature with user-submitted stories and images. Thus i believed that PHP/MySQL would be the way to go.

I'll have a look @ PHPMyAdmin when i've got a couple of spare minutes, thankx for the suggestion.

How easy is it to get to grips with the basics of PHP and MySQL? Could someone with basically no knowledge attempt a task like this and succeed?

Custom systems hey David? Well, you've already proved worth your weight in gold to us. People down here are gettin kinda excited about the little project. It's never been done like this before, and could turn our site into rather a major attraction to the right kinda people.

But enough about that, its very hush-hush at the moment

Anyone with any tips / advice for me on this?

Sounds like a great idea David. If you get it going then I would like to submit some stories! Anyways this is a great tutorial from webmonkey:
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/...tutorial4.html

I learned alot from it. Some site advertise book on "Making a php/mysql website" but I think you can do most of it just by websites, using the php manual, and forums like this.

If you have any specific questions on mysql or php or both then feel free to PM or email me.
-dk