OK, I am making a simple website for my softball team. I used Netscape Composer in the past, but am planning on using Microsoft FrontPage from now on. I am trying to make the site have stats, player profiles with individual stats, and things like that.
I want each player to have their own page with not only a bio that won’t change, but current stats (that change weekly). In the past I just manually typed in the new stats to each player’s page, but that took a long time.
Is there a way to incorporate a data base or something to make this faster, and if so, how? Right now I keep the stats in an excel spreadsheet, and I could put them in an access database too if I needed to. Could I set up the site so I only had to upload one updated stats list each week and everything else would change based on that?
Thanks for your help. I will be back to provide more info if needed.
Short form: you can do it, but unless you already know a web programming language, or you’re planning on doing it for the rest of recorded time, it probably ain’t worth it.
Long form:
for hosted (not on your computer) web sites: forget it, unless you’re willing to shell out some serious bucks. Nobody I know will let you run anything beyond JS scripts on their server for free.
On your PC:
A) MS web server (IIS, PWS): Make sure you patch it. Now go to www.w3schools.com. Take the ADO and ASP tutorials. If you learn them well, you should have all the info you need.
B) Apache et al: Learn PHP or PERL. Focus on CGI stuff. Also find out how to connect to databases (in PERL you use DBI). Good luck.
C) Either or, cheaply done: Learn JavaScript (at w3schools). Save your Excel file as a CSV. Copy and paste into a JS array. Use many document.write calls to format said array.
Oops. Some kind-hearted mod could drop the period from the autolink, and delete this post.
I know I could have previewed, but every time I preview, my login gets cleared and so does my post.
Correct link: www.w3schools.com
And, of course, you could always hire someone who knows web programming to create such a setup for you…
(Geek hijhack – it would be a pretty easy thing to do in PHP. Just store the stats in a text file, then have the players’ pages include PHP code to read the file and extract/display that player’s stats. Then the only work that would be needed is to update the text file every week.)
Good point in hijack. Got caught up in database stuff. Could do just as easily in PERL.
OK, so if you’re going the Apache route, “focus on CGI and filehandles.” not databases. For ASP though, do databases. Still somehow easier that way, methinks, since the query can easily be writ to do all kinds of happy aggregation/dating games/etc.
Have you tried creating a “Table” in Word instead of using Excel spreadsheets. They are easy to manipulate and update. It also has a “Sort” option allowing you to place stats in an ascending or descending order. I know Frontpage also has the capability to create a table, however I don’t think it has a “Sort” option.