Andrew David Joseph Hall

Server Side - Apache, PHP, MySQL

A simple web-page is expressed in HTML, stored in the web-server, for example Apache, and delivered to the browser to be interpreted into a page you see.

When Apache receives a request for a .PHP "page", Apache asks PHP to interpret the content of the .php "page" - code and HTML - into HTML pages which Apache then delivers to the browser.

MySQL is an SQL database with an Application Interface ("API") to PHP. PHP code can issue requests to MySQL to add, delete, amend and summarize data in the database. PHP can also serve up pages, or content for AJAX to include in pages, based on the data in the database.

This is the essence of "Content Management Systems" such as Wordpress and the basis for web-based applications which do more than serve up information.

OurSQS uses PHP with MySQL

In my OurSQS development, the structure and links contained in the menus are stored in a "menus" table in MySQL.

When an OurSQS page is requested, PHP reads the menus table from MySQL and formats the information in the HTML needed by the Spry Menu Widgets' Javascript.

Adding pages to the site requires: definition of a new page and a new entry in the menus table in MySQL.

Menus can also be tailored to different types of users, Professors, Students, etc... using "where" clauses in the SQL which retrieves the data from the "menus" table...