Needing help creating a shopping website

hi,

I am building a shopping website.. my client is a wookworker and he wants to
display his chairs/tables etc on his website. I've built about 30 pages
using HTML, but i know thats not going to be good in the long run because
the website may one day have a few thousand products - and I know changing
the layout of the "product pages" would mean manually editing thousands of
HTML pages.

I am just starting to learn PHP and although I hardly know anything I know
that it is possible to create these pages on the fly...

I could have one template in written in PHP and somehow have the website
create a PHP product page template that fill in the correct prices, sizes,
widths, description and product image. Although I dont know MySQL just yet I
think that maybe somehow I could Identify each product with a series of
special codes - eg. A particluar chair has a unique code, and the price,
description, size, and width, also has that same code. By clicking on the
"view product" link for that chair the PHP template would fill in the right
prices, width, descriptions by refering to the code and filling in the
blanks.

I figure that I would have to create a MYSQL database that had all the
details for the product. So, if a new chair was to be put on the website all
I would have to do is open the database, fill in its details, put the image
in a directory, and then create a link on the thumbnail gallery for chairs
that would reference its particular code. Then the PHP would look in the
MySQL database and display all the details on the "page on the fly".

Have i got the general idea ? I have never opened a MySQL database before
but I dont think the visual interface going to look like an Excel page or an
MS access file (in terms of inputing data).

Any comments on whether or not I am on the right track and or
scripts/tutorials on the web that would help me with what I want to do would
be greatly appreciated.

regards,
Jason

On Sun, 29 Jun 2003 20:04:06 +1000, "Jason M." <dd@dd.com> wrote:

>hi,
>
>I am building a shopping website.. my client is a wookworker and he wants to
>display his chairs/tables etc on his website. I've built about 30 pages
>using HTML, but i know thats not going to be good in the long run because
>the website may one day have a few thousand products - and I know changing
>the layout of the "product pages" would mean manually editing thousands of
>HTML pages.


Hello,

Check-out oscommerce.org

They have an excellent shopping program, PHP/MySQL.
Let me know if you decide to use it and need help for installation..

Gil.
--
http://keskydee.com