I'm very new to web developement, so I'm just looking for ideas on how to do this... On my home page I want to display, basically news bullitens. The news are to be provided by non-web savvy people ... ideally I'd have a form that they can enter the data on. Then, the data should show up on the home page. First thought is that this could be done with a little PHP - running the form and stuff the data into a database. Then the homepage can simply run a query to get the most recent items and format them for display. Or, is there something easier? The text being displayed is really simple, no formatting and generally pretty short (less than 1K). Hopefully no username/passwords will be required, but if this becomes a problem, how do you implement a password check on the data input form? Other ideas? Thanks!
There are a bout a dozen ways to do that with or without a database, but you are going to need some kind of user system. If it is open to anyone without a login it could become useless (due to junk posts) very quickly. Put the data entry form behind a login and the index page only has to output the last xx posts. It's a very simple system, but it's hard to be specific without knowing your needs --- how many users? Do the posts need to be archived? Etc.
It is a recreation community web site. Updates are several times a week by the caretaker. Updates are for things like the weather or maintenance problems. No need to archive more than maybe the 3 most recent items. I hope no password is needed so anybody can post this information easily. I don't expect the real users of the system will abuse this - but you never know I suppose. How do you put the dataentry behind a login? If/when it becomes necessary? I'm also looking to setup a community forum - this is where people can chat, put up classified ads, that sort of thing. Here I expect to have and require logins.
Try looking at these starter kits and see if this is what you are looking for. These starter kits are web applications that you can download for free from microsoft and upload to our server. Each should have detailed instructions on how to set it up on a shared hosting environment. http://www.asp.net/community/projects/
