Can anyone give me suggestions?

So im planning on making a song lyrics website. Going to have prob over 10k artists an lets just assume 10songs for each artists. All the songs are going to have their own page. What would be the best way to do this? I gotta admit all i pretty much know how to do is make the layouts in photoshop, slice up the page, then in Dreamweaver use the WYSIWYG to edit/put content in an what not. I got HTML know how, but im no pro. Should i be using php/css an all that other confusing stuff i was reading about on DP?

Also is WYSIWYG not sufficent for what im trying to do?

 

you can do it the WYSIWYG way but it would be very tedious and would take a long time. Your best bet is to get yourself a book and learn php/mysql which would help you out alot or you could do a search on hotscripts for something ready made Good luck with your project.

 

well the best way would be to use xhtml and css and make a tableless layout.

for all the info, it would be easy to use php and MySQL to produce mass pages.. then if you ever changed anything that effected the whole site it would be a peace of cake.

On my site the header is included, the css, the nav, and footer. Then the content is just written in the middle around all the included stuff via php.

but if I were you I would add the content with MySQL, so you would have 1 DB for each 'page'. Then you would only have one webpage for your whole site, like this forum. (file.ext?do=PAGEWHATEVER)

 

dcole the problem with that tho is i think search engines dont like and wont spider the link.

 

Just throwing it out there... if you're looking to find someone who could code this for you, shoot me a PM.

 

What exactly is php/mysql? I've read about it on the forum but I still cant really understand the concept of it. Whats its purpose?

 

Dear friend,

Every body in the thread above is talking about generating the pages through a database and maintaining the same so that you may add, edit, delete the pages on your site easily. It will save much of your effort as you will be probably using the same layout for all the proposed 100k pages.

php/mysql is good to learn if your really are interested in developing such a site totally on your own. If however you want a readymade solution wherein you can just put the content for the thousand of lyrics you talk about with some images here and there just send me a PM and I can help further.

 

PHP/MySql are two separate things.

First PHP: This is a programming language. Like javascript, asp, perl, smarty, and many others. It works on the server side though, which serves the basic purpose of not having to worry about browser differences. If you were to put a piece of code like this...

<?php echo ('This is a test'); ?>

... into a file with a .php extension, then call that page in a browser, you can view the source of the page, and all you will see in the source is... This is a test. Because, the code is being parsed before it gets to the browser. Unlike html though, you can use powerful "if", "for", and "while" statements and so on.

Second MySql: This is a database, period. It's a place to hold information that you can call on later. So if you have 10,000 pages of lyrics stored in your database, you can call on that data and put it into a webpage. The powerful thing though, is that it is independent of the code on the webpage, and therefore can be manipulated much easier and on a bigger scale easily.

 

If you go with dreamweaver, it will take you like forever to make pages for 10K artists.

Do this:
Make 1 page in WYSWYG the way you want it to look.
(1 home page, 1 internal page featuring an artist.)
Of course home page will use the same design but will feature samples of multiple artists selected at random or most popular, or something else...

The internal page will display info about the artist and provide downloads of songs etc. as you like it! Plus it can also suggest related songs based on category like rock, pop etc.
A search engine to search songs with artist name or something else would be a cool touch!!!

Then contact a website designer,(as you don't know much of php etc.), ask them to design a PHP program using the dream weaver page as template.
Don't worry of mysql, or php as the designer will take care of all that for you!

If you have the template ready, send me a PM and may be I can help!
Or provide you with a PHP and MYSQL database managed site at discounted costs using your WYSWYG page.

Bye

 

I was planning on using the google search bar for that, good idea or bad idea?

 

It's fine, but when you are planning on using a php and database driven website, use your inbuilt engine. This way you will have way more control on how results will be displayed and which pages to include etc. Now if you added a new song and google still has not re-indexed the new page then people will only see the old result, missing the new additions.
If you are programming the website yourself, or getting it programmed by someone, then adding an inbuilt search function will not be difficult.

Although if you plan on going with Dreamweaver, you can use google...
Bye

 

find a lyric script