A while back we took A Look at Responsive Web Design and how different designers utilize it in different ways. Now that we’ve seen a few examples in action, let’s create a responsive website of our own. In this installment we’re going to set up the structure of our homepage and add in a few media queries that will help the site load quicker, navigate better, and keep our desired appearance across multiple devices, platforms, and resolutions. Before we dive in to the HTML, let’s cover the “viewport”...
For the vast majority of modern websites, advertising is a major source of revenue. Banner ads for services related to the web site owner’s industry allow customers to view products that tie into the site owner’s core business. In exchange, the web site owner can charge the banner ad owner for every impression (banner ad appearance) or click-through (when a user clicks the banner ad). In order to build a banner ad management system, we must first create the database tables that will hold the ad information,...
This week we’re going to finish up our series on how to develop a clean website by laying out a secondary page. We’re going to include a secondary navigation bar along the top of our design, as well as include all of our text for the section on one page. This will eliminate the unnecessary loading of other pages when all that’s changing is the text. It will allow the visitor to browse your site quicker and be less work for you to develop. When all is said and done, this is what you’ll have developed:...
Unlike scalar variables, which assign only a single value to a variable, an array variable can hold multiple values. Arrays are useful for holding values from database queries or web form entries, where each field (also called a “key”) holds a specific value. Let's take a look at how we define some of the arrays we use in PHP.Numbered Arrays. If the programmer does not specify a key for each value in the array, PHP automatically numbers the keys, starting from zero. This code defines an array $arrMonths[],...
In the last piece on our PHP online user poll, we look at the administrative service and how the site supervisor enters, deletes and manages the poll data. The first poll administrative page checks if the administrator is logged in. You can choose from Session variables or Cookies to check the site administrator login status. Once the application has confirmed the identity of the site administrator, the page lists the available polls. The first step is to use the class methods and variables in the class.polls.php...
So far in this series, we have developed the data layer (database tables) and the business layer (PHP methods) for manipulating the data. In this piece, we will look at the presentation layer that is used to display the poll question and poll results. The HTML header will check for the presence of a cookie (in case the user has voted previously) and refresh the page if it has timed out. <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">...
In Part I of this series, we started the process of creating user polls for a business web site. Part I gave the layout of the data layer and began the construction of the class file. In this part we will continue with adding methods to the class file that will enable the administrator to set the variable values and read from the database tables. The setPollId($iPollId) method sets the value for the _iPollId variable. Since the constructor method calls the setPollId($iPollId) method, we must...
In the first two parts of this series, we created the data layer that will hold the polling data and established methods for setting the variable values and reading from the database tables. In this part, we will build the methods that will write new polls and answers to the tables. The addPoll method adds a new record to the devdrive_polls table and returns a Boolean value that signals if the record was added successfully. function addPoll($aArgs) { // add a poll record $sql = "LOCK TABLES devdrive_polls...