webpages that collect information to a database

He has: 17 posts

Joined: Dec 2003

Hey Everyone

I seriously need advise on the developing of a website that will collect data like a dataabase from the visitors that visit it. Please tell me of the proper webhosting that will support this sort of wesite. I know absolotely nothing about this form of web designing But I very much keen to learn.... Please give as much help as you can

They have: 461 posts

Joined: Jul 2003

you need to decide things like scalability.

there's a lot that will go into this.

if you wanna talk about designing a site, this is definitely the forums for it, but you should first prep yourself. that way you can give better answers to questions as well as better ideas of what you want.

i suggest you sit down and decide the following:
1- what data do you wanna collect? (this is important because depending ont he amount and what you wnat to collect you may feel certain storing methods will not be viable)

2- shall the visitor be able to edit any of this? if so what? (again, this influences how you store the information)

3- scalability: do you want something for say 30 users? 300 users? 3,000,000 users? anywhere from 3 to 3,000,000,000,000 users? from 3 users to an infinite amount?

when you are designing for a smaller site, you can do things differently than for a larger one, and then for something that will start out large, sometimes one can do things different than something that has to san, so the scalabilty as well as the data you want to collect are both very important and need to be thought out first.

when you know that, i suggest looking at storing it in a text file (one per user, and you can make it a csv or other type of simple spreadsheet and such), or a sql based db. the most popular is mysql

POSIX. because a stable os that doesn't have memory leaks and isn't buggy is always good.

He has: 17 posts

Joined: Dec 2003

I already have the informtion you're talking about. YOu see I think I''d need to collect DATA from about 300 000 people at first but When time comes and demand goes on, I'd then need to increase that. After demand says that I should increase the number of people that need access to these wont this be a problem if I have to change the HOst???

The Type of data would be mostly personal information and information on a certain product that would say be instantly updated to a certain webpage and some be avialable for me to use in conducting business.

3rdly this next sentence quoted from you is all greek to me, please explain it further.

"when you know that, i suggest looking at storing it in a text file (one per user, and you can make it a csv or other type of simple spreadsheet and such), or a sql based db. the most popular is mysql"

He has: 1,758 posts

Joined: Jul 2002

a CSV stands for Comma Seperated Values e.g.

firstname, lastname, address, postcode, phone, fax, email

SQL means "Structured Query Language" its a way of manipulating data in a database database. There are different varieties of SQL, one of the most popular is a type known as MySQL.

Andy

They have: 12 posts

Joined: Feb 2004

If you're looking at 300000+ then you're looking at SQL; this will need a front end in, say, ASP or PHP.

In other words you're looking at something which isn't a 5 minute job. A suitable host will get you set up (i.e. give you a site which allows for scripting and an SQL DB) but the rest is up to you.

Find your Old Flames at MyOldFlames.com

He has: 17 posts

Joined: Dec 2003

Because all this is all greek to me, would anyone be kind enough to email me some literature on the disign of such webpages so that I have a brief idea on what I'm working on or tell me some keywords to type on search engines to find the kind of stuff I'm looking for

I'd be grateful thanks
H....G..y

He has: 1,758 posts

Joined: Jul 2002

Checkout sitepoint.com and devshed.com

He has: 17 posts

Joined: Dec 2003

How about if I use Microsoft Access to do all the disigning of the forms and data access pages, would I still achieve such results. And what do you mean by a php front end in php and asp

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