a tall order... lol

I know nothing about PHP.

That said, when i get my webcomic up and running, it will be annoying to continually update the html.

i was wondering if i could do this with PHP.

before i get inot what I want the php to do, lemme first explain what the pages are of.

each page contains 3 things: a comic and 2 updates (sort of like an article or whatever.)

also, each page consists of four links: "first" (takes you back to the first comic's page, obviously doesn't need to be updated), "most recent" (takes you to most recent comic's page), and back and next (takes you to the previous and next comic's page, respectively.)

the most recent comic will not have a functioning "next" button since there is nowhere else to go. the first comic doesnt have a functioning back button.

the problem is that every time a new comic is uploaded and a new page created for it, the most recent comic changes. also, the 2nd newest comic's "next" link needs to be updated.

so, i was wondering, if php, if i could achieve this:

a. have an update page where there's room for a directory and two spaces for the updates.
b. when it updates, it creates a new html with the new comic and new updates.
c. when it updates, it makes the 2nd most recent comic's "next" button active.
d. it adds the comic's url in a link in an "Archive" page or section, where all the comics can be viewed.


it seems pretty complicated to me. I dont know how it'd be done in php. Anything to clear it up for me would be greatly appreciated.

again i know relatively no php so rattling off a bunch of php tags or something won't help... or maybe it will, but anyway, i need to knwo if it's doable, and how long would it take me to learn/do it.. :D thanks :D

Yes that is very possible and I think this sort of thing is already built 100x's over, but let me remember what it is called.... I'll try to remember in a bit.

first important question, do you have a mysql database?

tip: make a static html example of the page so we can see what it looks like.

A sample html page would be a good idea.

And I dont think that he wants to use MySQL (I talked to him about this project on AIM).

The only thing that I can't really get my head around in flatfile php is the "previous" and "next" navigation buttons. The rest would be easy, though. Maybe you could just have a list of all comics on each page, too. Like quick links, you know? That would be easy - it could be the same comic_list.inc.php file as that the archive uses.

And for me - I'd have to figure out how to upload images and everything, but I'm sure its not hard. php.net and you've got it! I'm not really sure what you're asking here - maybe what I've said has helped, though.

tom

no MySQL :( too bad, it would make this project very easy ...

I've done an image preview thing by just counting the number of images in a directory, then the link represents which image:
ie: image.php?id=23 obviously the next one is just one count up id=24 so all it needs is the variable that represents the current image number + 1. But I know comic fans have made these kinds of scripts and they don't use any db's .... There is a name for them and I can't remember what it is - lol....

http://qtone.sidez.net/flat/

is this the kind of thing you're looking for? it's a flat file script....

Thas awesome. How do you do the navigation buttons? I'm guessing that they're not in the files. What all is in the files? Do you use explode or something and make an array, or just store all the html in the text files.

I don't understand how the switch-case navigation works with this. Don't you have to add more cases to it each time? Or are variables used...? Can I see that part of the code? I don't really want to see all of it - I'd like to try to code something like that - I think its about at my level now. :D

tom

it's a rather simple script, took me 30 mins to complete, the code is a bit raw and dirty but here it is .... feel free to play around with it:

http://qtone.sidez.net/flat/flat_file_imgs.zip

suggestions are always welcome ...

Thats great QTone =)