Suzanne — Mon, 23 Jun 2003 12:11:44 +0000

Alternatively, add one field to the main database and an additional table.

Main Database: Date of Death

New Table: id, Obituary (blob?)

Then, if there is a Date of Death, display it and a link to the obituary so that if people only want the information, it's available, otherwise they can view the obituary.

Under the same set up, you can also display the obituary at the top of the information without offering the choice.

Mark Hensler — Mon, 23 Jun 2003 05:35:54 +0000

I would recommend altering the database. You're only going to have more people die. And I don't think you want to be editing old files everytime this happens.

Perhaps add a short varchar(30) field which contains the name of a file. Default value is an empty string. If the person dies, change the value of the field to the name of a file.

Example: John Doe died... create an 'In Honor Of" page, and call it "john_doe.php" and save it in a directory.

Now, anytime you query the DB for anyone, check this field first. If the field is empty, pull up records as usual. If the field is not empty, redirect to your directory/file_name.php.

redirect:
header("Location: http://example.com/path/to/file.php");

The path may be absolute, relative, or a full URL.