Show current data (contact info) on a page?

Is it possible to create a hidden form for an executive board to fill in their contact information (name, title, address, phone, email)… and then display this data on a “Contact” page so I dont have to update the information with the constant changes?

One hiccup would be for President 2009 record to be overwritten by President 2010 record. And the same for all other positions.

I know my server has SQL database capability, but wonder if this is what I should learn about… is this what is used to achieve the above? Also, how would it be setup in FWP on the page(s)?


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When you say hidden form I take it you mean where people need to login
to access it?

You could do this all with MySQL and a few PHP scripts, the hidden
form you refer to would be the admin for the user to access and edit
theit contact information so you would have a registration, login and
admin pages so the user could update their data. The login page woud
let the application know who the user was and so just give access to
the data for that user. The database would involve quite a learning
curve but for what you need that should not cost much from a third
party developer… doing it yourself would involve quite a lot of
reading, learning and time but of course is possible.

Not sure what you mean about the hiccup on the years as I don’t see one!

HTH

On Jan 2, 2009, at 12:20 AM, Beatrice wrote:

Is it possible to create a hidden form for an executive board to
fill in their contact information (name, title, address, phone,
email)… and then display this data on a “Contact” page so I dont
have to update the information with the constant changes?

One hiccup would be for President 2009 record to be overwritten by
President 2010 record. And the same for all other positions.

I know my server has SQL database capability, but wonder if this is
what I should learn about… is this what is used to achieve the
above? Also, how would it be setup in FWP on the page(s)?


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Ok, what type of third party app would I be looking for? No clue.

So I could have this current database displayed on one of my pages in FWP? How would I do that?

Right now I have a table setup and the contact info is listed there. I’d like those people to access a page to update the info for themselves. So, if the current position of President 2008 is Sam White, when Sally Brown comes along as President of 2009, I want that new contact info to display for that position.


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If I where doing this for myself this is how I would do it (In basic detail as exactly what you need is not totally clear):

I would create a login page, an admin page for adding/editing executive board members. When a member is added an email could be auto sent to the members email address along with a user and password and a note to tell them to login and change the password to something they prefer.

The admin person could select a member for President for 2008, 2009, 2010 etc. and then automatically when it is that year the President information reflects the President for that same year, if a year is approaching and a president is not selected for that coming year then an email alert could be sent to the admin person reminding them of this.

When a member logged in to their account they could only update their information and not that of other members while the admin person could access all members information.

I would use Freeway to build the pages for this and then include the php scripts (a line of php code) needed to run the dynamic and admin side. This does not display the database but rather pulls the information you need from the database and displays that information.

The information would be displayed on the Freeway pages by using a small amount of php code placed in a markup item between php tags at the location of where you want this information, a line something like: echo $member_name; would show the members name while: echo $member_address: would show the members address. The page that shows this information would have an include line of code at the start of the page to run the php script to retreive the information for the selected member or show who the current president is.

To do the above you would of course need to learn some PHP and how to integrate it in scripts to manipulate a MySQL database, for adding, editing and removing data and then learn how to use this in Freeway. To be honest it isn’t even just as simple as learning how to use these as being able to use PHP and accessing a MySQL database is only the small part of it, you then need to learn how to keep it all secure which is actually what can take up the time when writing the scripts.
There are content management systems out there that you may be able to do this with, to be honest I have never looked at any of these myself as * I * am happy working in PHP and MySQL building everything I need from the ground up which gives me more control over what I can do and because I enjoy working in PHP and MySQL but maybe the CMS would be much less of a learning curve for you if you wanted to do this all yourself, maybe someone with experiance in CMS will pipe in to let you know if this is possible and recommend a system.

If you need someone to develop something for you in php and MySQL then ask for people on the list to contact you as there are a few members that could do this and who might be interested. What it appears you need is not complicated and should not take a developer much time to knock up so depending on what this is for it may be worth paying a third party developer to do it for you, rather than getting involved in the learning process.

HTH
Mike


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Wow. Thanks for the explanation Mike. It helps. It is clear that the
project would be too much for me to take on. I think I would have the
user (executive board) submit a standard email to me (or find a
standard format to use). I was hoping it would be a fairly simple
process, but I will tackle that another time.

On Jan 3, 2009, at 9:39 AM, Mike B wrote:

If I where doing this for myself this is how I would do it (In basic
detail as exactly what you need is not totally clear):

I would create a login page, an admin page for adding/editing
executive board members. When a member is added an email could be
auto sent to the members email address along with a user and
password and a note to tell them to login and change the password to
something they prefer.

The admin person could select a member for President for 2008, 2009,
2010 etc. and then automatically when it is that year the President
information reflects the President for that same year, if a year is
approaching and a president is not selected for that coming year
then an email alert could be sent to the admin person reminding them
of this.

When a member logged in to their account they could only update
their information and not that of other members while the admin
person could access all members information.

I would use Freeway to build the pages for this and then include the
php scripts (a line of php code) needed to run the dynamic and admin
side. This does not display the database but rather pulls the
information you need from the database and displays that information.

The information would be displayed on the Freeway pages by using a
small amount of php code placed in a markup item between php tags at
the location of where you want this information, a line something
like: echo $member_name; would show the members name while: echo
$member_address: would show the members address. The page that shows
this information would have an include line of code at the start of
the page to run the php script to retreive the information for the
selected member or show who the current president is.

To do the above you would of course need to learn some PHP and how
to integrate it in scripts to manipulate a MySQL database, for
adding, editing and removing data and then learn how to use this in
Freeway. To be honest it isn’t even just as simple as learning how
to use these as being able to use PHP and accessing a MySQL database
is only the small part of it, you then need to learn how to keep it
all secure which is actually what can take up the time when writing
the scripts.
There are content management systems out there that you may be able
to do this with, to be honest I have never looked at any of these
myself as * I * am happy working in PHP and MySQL building
everything I need from the ground up which gives me more control
over what I can do and because I enjoy working in PHP and MySQL but
maybe the CMS would be much less of a learning curve for you if you
wanted to do this all yourself, maybe someone with experiance in CMS
will pipe in to let you know if this is possible and recommend a
system.

If you need someone to develop something for you in php and MySQL
then ask for people on the list to contact you as there are a few
members that could do this and who might be interested. What it
appears you need is not complicated and should not take a developer
much time to knock up so depending on what this is for it may be
worth paying a third party developer to do it for you, rather than
getting involved in the learning process.

HTH
Mike


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Mike’s post is also how I’d probably tackle it. Well, other than
considering WebYep, which may well be just the ticket - but involves
a modest cost.

Another approach that you could consider is setting up the page to
pull in some basic info from a blog. I think Walter may have an
Action that deals with this. Is that right Walter?

Then use a free blog purely as a way to update information; when the
contact details change, write a new blog post with the latest info.
If the page is set to pull the latest post from that blog then it
will automatically show the latest info once that’s been ‘blogged’.

A sledgehammer to crack a nut? Absolutely. But in this case 98% of
the work is done for you already; a blog is a ready-made content
management system with secure login, archiving of data, and so on. So
in many ways it is far less of a sledgehammer/nut situation than
almost any more conventional approach… :slight_smile:

k


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