Skip to main content
February 8, 2009
Question

Product Database Management For Manufacturers Web Site - How do I do this W/ Templates?

  • February 8, 2009
  • 3 replies
  • 832 views
In short, I have an excell database of product. I am developing a web site for a factory with many products. I have never used a database to fill specific template data, except for 3rd party shopping carts...

So, how do create a database, upload it to the site, and allow users to access product information? Looking for your typical database to template set up with tags in specics spots withint he HTML of the template that reference the columns of data in a specific row of the database.

I basically need a shipping cart, but with no "BUY" or "VIEW CART" buttons.

Thanks!
This topic has been closed for replies.

3 replies

Inspiring
February 16, 2009
February 26, 2009
No, I wish it was my site! ironically I am doing marine industry works, but I am not permitted to discuss the details.
Inspiring
February 16, 2009
Also, if you may want to look at using WebAssist's eCart with Universal
email (there are other tools too) that can help you build this.

http://www.webassist.com

They have a variety of version and I would recommend choosing PHP
because I've heard they are shelving classic ASP support.

In addition, I would use MYSQL as your database...IT'S FREE! It's also
very good because people are writing tools for it all the time.

For installation on Vista, I recently worked through this tutorial and
it worked really well.

http://maximumpcguides.com/windows-vista/how-to-create-a-windows-vista-iis7-mysql-php-web-server/


By the way, WebAssist has entire sample sites with the database. If you
have mySQL server setup, all you have to do is import the SQL script
file that is supplied and you can have a basic shopping cart up and
running in, literally, minutes.

Good Luck with this.
Inspiring
February 9, 2009
I'm not an expert on this but you need to know what sort of server
you're going to be using. The server can drive what database you're
going to use.

MySQL?
MSSQL?
Access?
There are others.

If you're on a PHP server you may want to stay with MySQL. Talk to your
server admin to see what is installed. MySQL has a control panel called
"Workbench" that can manage the database.

MSSQL uses Enterprise Manager to administer the database.

Whether it's MySQL or MSSQL, each will be able to import data; same can
be said for Access. Access is probably the least flexible; in other
words, it's not built for as high of performance but for small sites
without a lot of traffic, it's probably fine. With Access, you basically
build the tables and everything on your own computer and then upload the
mdb file to the server.

Once you have the database, you can start to build a page in
Dreamweaver. The first thing you should do is pick your server script
language VBScript, php, ... You then create a connection to the
database. Once the connection is made, those tables become available to
drag and drop on your page. From there you can do repeats and form
columns of data to display products.

That's it in a nutshell.