Re: Data architecture question

_if_ any only if you don't need to check anything else against the database (i.e. is this person logged in, etc) then, I recommend using PHP only on an administration site, and storing all of your content in a database. then, you can do nightly (or more often) chrons of a PHP script in cgi-mode, and have it rsynch the entire hierarchy of new files to the server. that'll be rippin' fast. _a -- Alex Black, Head Monkey enigma@turingstudio.com The Turing Studio, Inc. http://www.turingstudio.com vox+510.666.0074 fax+510.666.0093 Saul Zaentz Film Center 2600 Tenth St Suite 433 Berkeley, CA 94710-2522 > From: mstearne@entermix.com (Michael Stearne) > Newsgroups: php.general > Date: 13 Dec 2000 09:15:35 -0800 > Subject: Re: [PHP] Data architecture question > > > On Wednesday, December 13, 2000, at 11:38 AM, Ashley T. Howes PhD wrote: > >> This is not a specific PHP question, but more a data architecture >> query. However I guess several of you have considered this more than >> once. >> >> In developing a news site with many articles on it, what is best >> practise for storing and administering the content? A specific >> problem I have been examining is that each database field can store >> only a finite number of characters. If the body of an article is >> larger than this, what is the best approach for storage? > > Most databases shouldn't have any problem storing a story that is even several > pages, in mySQL the field type is TEXT. You could store the story is an > external file, but I am more inclined to store the text of the file in the > database. This was you can still separate content from the layout of your > site but having all the text of all the stories in one database might prove to > be easier to administer. > >> solution might be to save the content in a text file with a unique >> filename on the hd - but this must lead to slow queries as the data >> is external to the db. >> > If you do go with external files, I don't think this will be very slow, what > might be slow is the large query results that are returned from the database > field that may contain a story with 10,000 words. This is the case where you > can get into making static HTML pages from one query of the database, to save > the load on the database. > >> What about specifying formatting of the content? Is the best >> approach to place formatting tags in the copy which are interrupted >> on the fly? How about images associated with the copy, should these >> be saved to unique filename on hd, or is there a better approach? > > The administration sites that I have created and seen have had the journalist > insert some basic HTML themselves if necessary like <B> <I> <A HREF>, etc. > Coming up with you own shorthand HTML language and then parser might be > overkill and a waste of your time. They can always use a WYSIWYG tool like > Dreamweaver to do their story and then paste in the HTML source. > > The graphic images for the story should be stored in the filesystem and > referenced to in the database. Like: image1='story378383image1.jpg' which > when printed in the script will look like: <IMG > SRC="/where/my/images/are/<?echo $r->image1?>"> > > Michael > > > -- > PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) > To unsubscribe, e-mail: php-general-unsubscribe@lists.php.net > For additional commands, e-mail: php-general-help@lists.php.net > To contact the list administrators, e-mail: php-list-admin@lists.php.net >