I'm just starting to read about open source and have an idea. I am webmaster for a sports team website and every monday, the players selected for the wednesday game are posted on a piece of paper outside the sports hall. Players able to play tick their name off. What i would like to do is be able to have one webpage on my site which lists these selected players. Then have them able to edit the page to show if they will play or not so that team captains can log on to the page from home to see who is available and who not. What kind of things do i need to implement this ? any ideas ? is it easy ? cheers

PHP, and 1 mysql database. Alternatively, you could do it with a flat file database, but then you would still need some form password protection. Its an interesting idea......

I am just curious what this has to do with open source?

well my understanding of open source is that anybody viewing a web page has the power to make changes. changes that all future viewers of that public web page will also see. i want a web page which all players can access from home, make changes to and whos changes are visible to all future viewers. Or have i completely got the wrong end of the stick with open source ?

Open source just means that the source code is open for anyone to view and do with what they wish. However the ability to view the sourcecode through the browser is limited and editing through the browser is impossible without an already coded tool to do just that.

heh. It's possible. We've got the same thing at my workplace, however not many people seem to keep by it...

do you know how its implemented at your workplace ? whether people keep by it is another matter but first i wanna see if its a feasible solution

Originally Posted by Wenslock

heh. It's possible. We've got the same thing at my workplace, however not many people seem to keep by it...

Thats what I meant. It's impossible without a tool to do such a thing. Although letting others have full control over one website is a big security risk.

Im no expert but I would imagine you would not give individuals the ability to make changes to the site, just to their individual "account".

So you would perhaps present all the names on your page and then they could log into their "account" and update their status (whether they are available or not)

This person needs to do there homework! They don't even understand "open source" (i had to laugh)

Hey - there once was a day when you didn't either, so keep your comments to yourself unless they are helpful.

Source code in this case refers to the source code of a program/application, not to the source code of a website. An open source project is a software project in which the code is freely available for people to change, recompile and contribute to. Examples include the source to the PHP system itself (written in C I believe), the MySQL database management system, and the linux operating system. The opposite to this is proprietary software like MS windows, MS access, Adobe photoshop etc.

If you want a webpage where people can change the content of the page, you either need to look into a 'content management system' (CMS) which is a set of scripts that allow authorized people to make limited changes to web source-code (HTML). Alternatively you can set up a wiki based system - see wikipedia for an example of this.