Pete Bagnall

Database backed websites - From design to implementation in one week

This course covers using personas in design, using Fireworks for rapid sketching of designs, and building database backed websites. It's intended as a taster to all these topics. It's not expected that everyone will go away from this experts, but it will at least give you a feel for what sort of work is involved in doing each part.

Days 1-2 should be ok for anyone, but probably most challenging for people from a computing background. Days 3-5 are intended for those without prior computing experience, although those with should gain something as well. Those with computing experience should expect to be able to implement a simple functioning site by the end of day 5. Those without should aim to understand the concepts, and have tried to build some simple pages, and a simple database.

Day 1 - Persona Based Design

Day 2 - Scenario Sketching with Fireworks

Day 3 - Building a simple website by hand

Day 4 - The SQL... Where do we put the data?

Resources

• MySQL
• Screenshot of a database browser

Day 5 - The Return of the HyperText... Putting it all together

Examples

• Slide 3.4 - A PHP page (Source)
• Slide 3.6 - A simple PHP program (Source)
• Slide 3.7 - Another simple PHP program (Source)
• Slide 3.11 - if else elseif (Source)
• Slide 3.12 - while (Source)
• Slide 3.13 - for (Source)
• Slide 3.16 - Arrays (Source)
• Slide 3.18 - Getting data from a Form (Source)
  • Target script (Source)
• Slides 3.19-3.22 - Getting data from the Actors table (Source)
• Slide 3.32 - Adding data to the Actors table (Source)
  • Target script (Source)

Resources

• PHP
• PHP Documentation

© Peter Bagnall