Hi,

this is my first post on these threads, I am starting a project for an NPO(non-profit organization) and they have a need for a database in their website, which I will be designing. I know some web design, in relation to all people here I am probably a novice however, I have made a few sites.

I'm going to do an anology for their website, this is not what it is actually about but will explain what is needed without invading their privacy. The site would be a site for Kitchen Managers, basically what the site does is host different ways Kitchen Managers handle part of their job. Kitchen Managers from across the country would submit things they do in their kitchen to make their lives easier. The board of the NPO i'm working for will review these submissions, and if deemed worthy they would upload them onto the site, into a library of good practices for kitchen managers. Hopefully that makes sense... This library can then be searched by anyone who comes to the site through a variety of different catagories or keywords that the board attached to each submission.

Now my problem is I know nothing about web database development. I feel like this shouldn't be too difficult a task to create. My thought would be that somewhere there would be a database that could easily be edited by the board of NPOs(not the most tech savvy people). In the database I think there would be the following Values:

ID Number
Name
Short Description
Keywords
Date Added
Rating(possibly depending on difficulty)
Author
URL(where the page has been stored)

Im thinking this is probably the best way to manage the database is to leave the actual page out of it and just let the database store its location. I am curious as to any advice on any aspect on what I have written above. The main purpose of my post is moreso to get any kind of advice as to how to go about learning how to make this idea a reality. I am planning to buy a book tomorrow on web databases, hopefully I can get some advice on what book to buy but any online tutorials that you guys like would be great also.

Hopefully based off of what I have explained above I can get some more specific advice as to what direction I need to go in. Thanks in advance,

Chase

The database is only going to be a container for the data. You are going to require some kind of script (php, asp, .net) to add / read the database into a user-friendly way.

thanks mgraphic for the quick response... Alright thats good to know, is there somewhere I can determine which method of interpretation is best for me? Also what am I going to use to make the database itself?

Depends on if you have a web host, and what they provide for you. PHP and MySQL are easy enough to learn and they are available for free to download (with Apache as the server) to develope on your local machine.

Here are a couple of sites that I became familiar with when researching database normalization. Granted they are geared around MySQL, but the same concepts apply.

An Introduction to Database Normalization
And MySQL AB :: An Introduction to Database Normalization

Good luck with it.

Also, don't expect to be able to do this in a short period of time unless you already have a background in programming.