Some HTML features I have not figured out yet (but need to for a project I am doing)

So I am making a website for my schools Undergraduate government (by choice, they have no idea, and I want to bring up to them a decent draft of a website before I present).  

Basically, what I want to do is have a website where any student can log in (not register, I only want students of my school to be able to do anything on the site, I will use the schools database for usernames and passwords) and leave a comment anonymously.  At the same time, I want the Senators of my student government to be able to have their own special log in where they can make special comments on different things under their own name.  I also want there to be links to older pages so the comment page won't be cluttered with the first comments 1 year from now (but those comments will be there in the archive, aka the last page of comments).

So the things I will need to know to do that which I don't currently:

1) Log in's: how do I make a log in system, and how do I give Senators priority access to certain pages?

2) Comments: How do I allow people to be able to leave comments?  I believe a forum system like this one would work well.

3) New pages for older comments: say I want 10 comments (for example) from people on each page, then after the first 10 comments go onto the website, the website will generate a new web page on which the first comment will go to.

I think those are the main things I don't know, so any help on those 3 topics would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You,

Enahs.

Step 1, learn how to use apostrophes.

Step 2, you'll need to deal with the database entries in some way, I don't think you'll be able to easily access the database info in the way you'd need, I'd imagine you'd have to have another created.

If by the student info, I will be giving the website to the school (assuming it's taken) so it's not like I will just be taking student info.  In fact, I probably will never see said student information.  If that's not what you mean by database, then what do you mean?

What I mean is, you'll need an active database to use and work with the site, not just something you "plumb" in to the school's existing database.

you need to use PHP. static pages are not going to work. this is well beyond the scope of simple html. you're dealing with databases and dynamic pages

PHP it is then.  I'll start looking at that right away.  Thanks.

You can always refer to this sticky I wrote and read through the different languages. There are links which will provide a good start. You will be looking at SQL and PHP. Javascript, HTML, & CSS.

cool, thanks.  This could come in handy.

1.) Look into Windows Authentication for Web sites, many google articles, this will talk to the school domain controller for authenticate users onto your website (you said you wanted to use their current log in information).

> Doing this will also sync passwords with the main computer system, that is if you school is using windows domains.

 

2.) You're most likely going to be using an SQL database for this, and using PHP mysql functions to store the data and manipulate. I'm pretty sure there is a newer function for PHP that handles mysql a little different and better. Unsure at this stage.

 

3.) For pages, simply google pageify, and i'm pretty sure there are some simple articles that show you how to write pageifys

> As for that pageify will do;

 - It coun't how many comments in a secion, then displays the first 5 and prints at the bottom of the page "next page". Once clicked you can use HTML GET (or POST) to select the page from the URL and the php script will take that page, and display the appropriate comments.

 

If you need any help, I don't mind. However I've not actually played with Windows Authentication so I don't actually know how to write that in. Look into PHP Cookies and Sessions as well, you'll need to know how they work.

 

EDIT;

I know its tempting, but you won't learn anything by ripping code. Do what I do. Rip the code into another php document then use require("<PHP DOC HERE>"); to allow calls to the code.

Work out how the code works and what the functions do, and rewrite it differently. Ripping code never helps anyone.

OR....

build it in visual studio on .net

membership framework out of the box with the ability to create roles and access privileges directory level privaleges

A simple comments system can be built with learning just the basic crud (create / read / update / delete) of sql.

You can also skip all the work and just use CMS like Joomla, Wordpress or Drupal.

Basically you have HTML which is the markup language. Consider it something like the visible part of the site.

Then you have CSS. CSS is what specifically is used to style the HTML and make each element (things in tags) look and position themselves how you want. The basics are pretty simple here.

Then you have PHP, which is the server-side code that runs the logic on the server. This is out of site to the user and is executing when users are changing pages on websites, from a basic perspective.

You'll really just have to google into this, read up on PHP and learn the basics to get an idea of how it works. Online you'll find examples that start to make sense. Maybe look for hello world examples and simple calculations to learn about variables and things like that. Going head on in to a login system is asking for headaches, unless you have done a reasonable amount of basic programming before in something like Java or some version of C.

As Ooppa said, there are available CMS systems that with a bit of practice could see you build a website in very little time and then leave you with all the time to design it and style it.