Little help?

Lord Poppycock's picture

He has: 12 posts

Joined: Aug 2004

Is there a way that can type in a number once and have it show up on a page several times? I’m building an online catalog with a few thousand products and would like to save time making a page for each product by entering each product number into the page once rather than several times. Thanks a bunch.

They have: 222 posts

Joined: Sep 1999

I'm not really experienced in that area, but I would imagine the best thing to do would be to store all the product information in a database and then query the DB from the webpage every time you need the info. That way, you'd only have 1 page but the content on it would vary depending on what you called from the database. I'm sure others who have experience with that can elaborate. But I imagine that any other way would take much more time and effort.

KarenArt's picture

She has: 354 posts

Joined: May 2001

IanD's exactly right!

What kind of backend are you using for your catalog?
I like php but a lot of people also use asp. Are you using MySQL for the database? I'm trying to teach myself more about that because the flat files just aren't good enough for anything that will grow in the future.

gotta finish redesigning my sites so I can show them again.

The purpose of education is... to get more jokes!

AyntRyte's picture

He has: 145 posts

Joined: Jun 2004

I concur. For that many products, I would recommend a CMS as a front end to whatever server/database your host provides.

Lord Poppycock's picture

He has: 12 posts

Joined: Aug 2004

The customer I'm working for was using Tripod and they don’t provide PHP, ASP, or anything else useful like that, just CGI/Perl. So I had them switch to 1and1; now I can work with PHP3, PHP4 and MySQL.

So, is there a way that can type in a number once and have it show up on a page several times? I’m building an online catalog with a few thousand products and would like to save time making a page for each product by entering each product number into the page once rather than several times. Thanks a bunch.

KarenArt's picture

She has: 354 posts

Joined: May 2001

Do you know how to write php code so you can create a catalog or are you looking for a premade script that you can use for this?

Lord Poppycock's picture

He has: 12 posts

Joined: Aug 2004

I don’t know php will enough to do something like this yet. I was hoping someone could point me in the direction a premade script or a tutorial. Otherwise I suppose I could just write each page in html using my existing template.

KarenArt's picture

She has: 354 posts

Joined: May 2001

Ohh gosh... I wouldn't try to do a catalog in html unless the client was paying really big bucks. Wink

There are some php catalog and shopping cart scripts at http://php.resourceindex.com/Complete_Scripts/Shopping_Carts/
I'm sure you could find tons more by searching for php catalog scripts in google.

Best of luck!
Let us know what you come up with.

gotta finish redesigning my sites so I can show them again.

The purpose of education is... to get more jokes!

Abhishek Reddy's picture

He has: 3,348 posts

Joined: Jul 2001

Also look through hotscripts.com Smiling

Lord Poppycock's picture

He has: 12 posts

Joined: Aug 2004

Thanks a lot. I’ve found something that looks promising I’ll let you know if it work and/or what I end up doing.

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