I am about to begin a website with dreamweaver and MySql. It's for a Used Car Dealership. I really have no idea where to start. I already have a hosting package and would like some assistance. Hopefully you guys and gals and come through for me.

Andrew

Dreamweaver is an application, while MySQL is a technology. One really doesn't have anything to do with the other.

Ok, so any idea on how I would begin building a site with a MySQL database?

With a server-side coding language such as PHP.

WOW. Very helpful posts.

May I ask what your background is? What your experience is?

Background is Computer Repairs. and my experience is very limited. Used WYSIWYG and edited with Frontpage.

Ah, I see. In order to work with a database, such as MySQL, you need to program it with a server-side language, which takes study and preparation. Although there are Content Management Systems (CMS) that will do some tasks for you, there is no universal tool to build any site from scratch using a database. MySQL is a series of commands, and a structure for storing data. It also has something known as "stored procedures", but they are not used very often since server-side languages are so much more powerful.

If you had some programming experience, you might be able to jump into something like PHP in less than a month, but without that it is hard to tell.

In the meantime, I would look into a CMS such as Joomla or Drupal, to see if they might fit your needs. Both are free, open-source web applications that work on a PHP framework.

Well, you can work with PHP in Dreamweaver, at least DW8 and CS3, you just have to set it up properly to work with it. It's color-coding is helpful for languages like PHP.

Thank you both for useful responses. I am using DW8.

So Joomla and Drupal is sort of like WYSIWYG for building websites with databses???

They are both Content Management Systems (CMS), they are NOT WYSIWYG designers. They use a database to hold your content and information and serve out the data inserted into a template.
You would design a template (or have one designed for you) that was suitable for the CMS you chose to use.

Chrish do you know someone you would be willing to help me with designing the template?