How to Create an Advanced PHP MySQL Driven Website
It's easy to learn the basics of HTML code. It's not so easy to create a massive site with MySQL databases, tabbed layouts, embedded videos and a sales checkout section. Luckily, you can use Content Management Systems, or CMSes, to set up and maintain your site and do most of the heavy lifting for you behind the scenes (such as creating dynamic PHP pages and interacting with your MySQL databases). It's possible to create a strong site with very little programming skills (though they undoubtedly help), but what you do need is a strong organization and a familiarity with all the different components with which sites are made.
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Instructions
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Steps
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1
Create a site plan. Organize your ideas, map out how you'd like your site to be structured, jot down some rough ideas about how you'd like it to look and figure out the type of content (articles, videos or user-submitted reviews) that you'd like to put on it. A good rule of thumb is to never create more than seven different "master" sections, lest you confuse or put off visitors. Of course, those "master" sections can each have seven subsections or more.
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2
Find a domain name that's actually available (see Resources for a link to an availability checker). Don't set out thinking you can create a website called books.com, because that's already taken--and so are your next seven ideas. The upside? You'll probably end up with a creative title that's better than the one you had originally.
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Buy the domain name along with a hosting account. You'll run into a lot of choices; make sure the hosting account comes with at least one (or better yet, an unlimited amount) of MySQL databases and no less than 5 GB of server hard-disk space (depending on the size of your site, you'll probably want a lot more; pictures add up quickly). One hosting company that has a good combination of price and reliability is GoDaddy (see Resources).
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Create a MySQL database to store your site's data. The details are different for each hosting company, but it's usually a simple matter of creating a database name, a username and a password.
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Familiarize yourself with phpMyAdmin. PhpMyAdmin is a program provided free by most hosting companies for you to manipulate databases without needing to know SQL code. You won't need to directly alter your database tables often, but it's important to know how should a random case arise, such as if you need to transfer your data to another server.
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Choose a Content Management System (CMS) that's right for your site. The CMS will serve as the administration section of your website, where you can create new sections and content and upload pictures and video, so this is a big step. WordPress is good at blogging and magazine-style sites. Drupal is the best bet for community-based sites. CMS Made Simple, or CMSMS, is for smaller or medium-sized sites and is the easiest to learn. There are dozens more, many of them completely free, so feel free to look around. No matter which one you choose, you'll spend a good deal of time learning and experimenting with it.
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Set up and design your site. Most CMSes offer a range of pre-made design templates, but chances are you'll want something more unique. Your best bet is to start with one of the basic templates; with the foundation in place, most of the work will be done for you, allowing you to make only minor tweaks to the PHP files or create a custom CSS stylesheet.
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Upgrade to a hosting account with more bandwidth as your site grows more popular. How much bandwidth you need depends on how much traffic you're expecting to get during peak times. Let's say everything on your homepage--the php file, all the graphics, the embedded video--add up to 1 MB worth of stuff. That means every visitor that visits your homepage takes up 1 MB's worth of bandwidth. If you get fifty visitors a day, that's 1,500 visits per month, or 1.5 GB's worth of bandwidth per month. Advanced sites aiming for a lot of traffic will want a lot more than that.
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