Website Design Forum

**Y-aji** · 10-23-2006, 03:42 PM

Hello all, I have almost given up hope on this issue and am leaning towards just using iframes as this website is for a small school district. I dont even know if this is the right place to put this..

Let me give the skinny:
I have been assigned to create a new website for my local school. They have multiple people accessing this website, one for each building, basically. So, there is a total of 6 or 7 people using it. Our concern is that they may screw it up somehow if we give them too much access.. The solution presented to me (and somewhat well known, but just feels dirty) is to use iframes and just make seperate pages within the main template and smash them in place with some divs. I would prefer not to do that, as i know very little supports any form of frame use any longer, and never really has very effectively, in all honesty.
What language do i need to learn to accomplish this? I dont even know where to turn, a friend mentioned php, which i dont even really know anything about php. Would php do what I need it to, and if so, where do i start?
I'm seriously giving into the iframe thing, because it would be so easy, but the easy route is usually the wrong one, right? also, is there a command within a css file that can add/change a link to something? like (this is wrong, i know)

#mylinks {
ahref: index2.htm;-name-"Important links";
}

or is this another feature of php, possibly?

Thanks so much,
Keith

**vangogh** · 10-23-2006, 05:26 PM

If I'm understanding right, the PHP thing was presented to you as a solution is the include function. In a way it's simialr to using a frame. I use it for things that will repeat across to pages to keep everything in one file, but you could use them to include something on a single page if you want.

Lets say you have an index file. It will need to be index.php. And you want to include a menu on the page. You might make a file then called menu.php with all your menu code. Then in the index.php file where you would want that menu code to appear you would have something like:

<?php include "path-to-menu.php" ?>

That's really all the php you would need for this. You would need to make sure the server has PHP included as an option (which it most likely does) and make sure that any file that uses the included has a php extension.

Here's a link to the include function from the php.net site.

I'm not sure I understand what you're asking about changing links. There are ways you can change the href attribute of of a link using css and javascript, but I'm not sure if it's what you're looking for. Could you describe what you're wanting to do with changing the link?

**Y-aji** · 10-23-2006, 11:38 PM

Thanks so much, i think you have definately pushed me in the right direction. I've since spoken with the friend in more detail about the situation and have a more full understanding of both css and php...
Forget about the change links thing, im definately mistaken on that idea.. Thanks again..

**Y-aji** · 10-24-2006, 03:41 PM

Okay, next question, i now am using the following in my script:

<div id="mainbody">
<?php
include "hs001.php"
?>
</div>

now, how do i clear that data (hs001.php) and insert new data (hs002.php) with a link reference?

<a href="prim.php">District</a> |
<a href="school.htm">School</a> |
<a href="pschool.htm">Powerschool</a> |

i need my links to target new data, this is how it's setup now. Basically, i'm trying to emulate <ahref src="whatever.htm" target="iframe">, by retrieving data, rather than pulling a second webpage up at the same time.

**vangogh** · 10-24-2006, 06:44 PM

Well with the include you would generally send the link to a new page and on that page you would include the new files with PHP.

When I set up a site I usually pull out all the elements that will be common on every page. The header becomes it's own file, the menu becomes it's own file, the footer becomes it's own file. When I'm done I may have a page that looks like:

<body>
<?php include "path-to-header.php" ?>
<?php include "path-to-menu-php" ?>

<div id="content">
code for main content here
</div>

<?php include "path-to-footer.php" ?>
</body>

That's overly simplified, but it's the basic idea. It's less about chaning one part of the page as it is loading a new page, but not needing the code for the parts of the page that repeat.

If you only wanted to change a portion of a page without loading a new page I think you're looking at using an iframe of perhaps some AJAX programming.