I want visitors to be able to leave comments...

[Eric]

Hey there

I'm a self taught newbie, which I guess goes hand and hand.

I'm building a site about retro and special edition Japanese video game
consoles (www.japan-games.com). I'll have a page for each of the consoles.
If you look at "Preview 3" you'll see a sample product page.

There is sometimes debate about the release date, original price, limited
quantities, etc of the older consoles. I wanted to include a Wikipedia-type
message area where people can add their own comments if they have some bits
of information to share. That way the page can collect small pieces of info
and other interesting tidbits about the really rare consoles.

Is a Wikipedia type service overkill for this? I just want to make it easy
for someone to but able to add a quick comment without having to go through
the email process. I've started to read from the WIkipedia site but mostly
that's for setting up an entire Wikipedia-type site, not just one part of a
static page. I could do that and then insert the wikipedia page into a
frame on the static page for that particular console.

Other options:

I'll have a message board, and I was thinking of adding in a frame that has
the open folder for that console or company on the mesage board.

I was also thinking about just adding an email link and having them send
comments to me and I can update the site manually.

Or would a simple text box do the trick?

If you guys could give me some tips I'd appreciate it.

Thanks,
Eric

 

[Hywel Jenkins]

Hey there

I'm a self taught newbie, which I guess goes hand and hand.

I'm building a site about retro and special edition Japanese video game
consoles (www.japan-games.com). I'll have a page for each of the consoles.
If you look at "Preview 3" you'll see a sample product page.

There is sometimes debate about the release date, original price, limited
quantities, etc of the older consoles.

Or would a simple text box do the trick?

No. You'll need some server-side processing to add the comment to the
page, either by re-writing vanilla HTML, or by having some server-side
process output database content to the browser. Look in to PHP with
MySQL as an answer.

 

[daninbrum]

(e-mail address removed) says...

No. You'll need some server-side processing to add the comment to the
page, either by re-writing vanilla HTML, or by having some server-side
process output database content to the browser. Look in to PHP with
MySQL as an answer.

Hywel,

Isn't PHP/MySQL needlessly complex for this kind of thing? We may be
comfy arsing around with SQL, but if he's a newbie, I think Perl and
text-files would be a FAR simpler way of achieving this - much better
server support and dead simple code.

If he wanted to go for a proper WIKI (note to newbie - DON'T), then
maybe mySQL would be the best choice, but if just wants people to be
able to swap thoughts, i'd suggest keeping it simple.

Just my thoughts, Hywel does more of this than me i suspect.

Dan Vesma (long time been away - now is back in alt.html)

 

[hywel.jenkins]

Hywel,

Isn't PHP/MySQL needlessly complex for this kind of thing?

Possibly, but it is scalable.

We may be
comfy arsing around with SQL, but if he's a newbie, I think Perl and
text-files would be a FAR simpler way of achieving this - much better
server support and dead simple code.

Hmm. Perhaps a compromise on PHP and a text file?

Dan Vesma (long time been away - now is back in alt.html)

Dan Vesma - didn't you used to be famous!? I think about you every
time I drive past Web Tree Avenue is Hereford! How are things?

 

[Eric]

Thanks for the comments...I'll start researching. I'll probably know
quickly if I'm going to hit a wall.

 

[Dan]

Isn't PHP/MySQL needlessly complex for this kind of thing?

Possibly, but it is scalable.
True.


Hmm. Perhaps a compromise on PHP and a text file?

Might be a plan - am an old Perl user stuck in my ways - none of this
fluffy PHP stuff!

Dan Vesma - didn't you used to be famous!? I think about you every
time I drive past Web Tree Avenue is Hereford! How are things?

Hmmm... big time. Other than the occasional slating in Internet
Magazine, i wouldn't exactly call it fame! You in the 'ford? Am over in
Glos - should hook up for a beer it's been ages since I hung out in
Hereford - went to school there (back in the day). Am doing stuff with
Perl on Macs at the moment - webmail suite, DMS thingy, time management
application. How 'bout you - what you workin on?

Dan

 

[Jim Higson]

Hey there

I'm a self taught newbie, which I guess goes hand and hand.

I'm building a site about retro and special edition Japanese video game
consoles (www.japan-games.com). I'll have a page for each of the
consoles. If you look at "Preview 3" you'll see a sample product page.

There is sometimes debate about the release date, original price, limited
quantities, etc of the older consoles. I wanted to include a
Wikipedia-type message area where people can add their own comments if
they have some bits
of information to share. That way the page can collect small pieces of
info and other interesting tidbits about the really rare consoles.

Is a Wikipedia type service overkill for this? I just want to make it
easy for someone to but able to add a quick comment without having to go
through
the email process. I've started to read from the WIkipedia site but
mostly that's for setting up an entire Wikipedia-type site, not just one
part of a
static page. I could do that and then insert the wikipedia page into a
frame on the static page for that particular console.

Other options:

I'll have a message board, and I was thinking of adding in a frame that
has the open folder for that console or company on the mesage board.

I was also thinking about just adding an email link and having them send
comments to me and I can update the site manually.

Or would a simple text box do the trick?

If you guys could give me some tips I'd appreciate it.

Most recent CMS allow user comments, and aren't too difficult to set up.
Personally I use Drupal - it handles all the SQL backend for you so you
don't have to worry about the low level stuff too much.

Take a look at some Drupal sites to see what I mean. There's a quite full
list at http://drupal.org/image/tid/41

Mambo/Joomla is also pretty well regarded, but I've never liked it much.