I am building a web site that is linked to a database. the database is full of contacts that can be displayed using the php select from table function. everytime a user searches the php script runs and displays the appropriate contact information. The tables within the database are populated by individuals entering there information in a form.

I want to revamp the site so that contacts are found only by browsing rather than searching. rather than running a php script in order to get results for browsing i want to catagorize the contacts so that they are displayed without runing a php script but rather just pulling up another web page.

for example. users could browse from the following options.

People| Cars | animals

each link would then take them to another page where they could either view all the people or cars or animals or narrow the search farther.

so under the "Cars" link there is a list of all cars then another sub catagory of links.

chevy|honda|saturn

and again under honda it displays all the honda's and also a sub catagorys

civic| accord.


so my question is

1. what is the best way to do this without running running a select from table script?

2. how do i set up my tables??

I know this is a lot to chew on but if someone with some experience would try that would be great. if im not being clear enough let me know and i will explain in more detail.

if i could simply display rows of a table on each webpage i could simply link the pages to create this effect. so is there a way to display table rows or even entire tables on a web page with out running a php script?

Unless im understanding the question incorrectly i do not see how you would be expecting to display data from a database on a website without using a select statement, in the example of selecting the catagory cars or even a sub catagory honda there would always need to be an sql statment to get the information from the database unlike the searching way were u would be saying select somthing from the table were somthing has the value of the searched term you would still need a statment to select this information just this time u would be selecting everything in the cars category etc.

I might not be understanding the question correctly tho, as for setting up your tables that would really depend on the ammount of information the database is storing which would determine how many tables you would need to make it a relational database.

hopfully somthing from this reply will make some sense lol

i think the reason that you dont want to use PHP boils down to your skillset

Cant get away from it. You need to learn some scripting