Creating the Blog Script for a PHP/MySQL Blogging System (Page 1 of 4 )
In this second part of a three-part series on blogging with PHP and MySQL, we will be looking at the actual blog. The blog will be simplicity itself. I have created a style sheet that will help in making the blog look clean and neat. The blog will be based purely on a open blog system.
A downloadable file for this article is available
here.
Introduction
Integrating the login script with the blog should not be a problem for you. In fact all it needs to do is send a user through, if his or her login is valid, and then log the user out. The blog will have a MySQL backend that will store all the articles and related replies.
It will also have a categories table that we will use to store all the different categories in. The categories will help us group the articles together that belong to the same category. This will be achieved by adding a "categoryID" foreign key to the article table.
To retrieve the articles we will mostly use joins in our SQL, as this is the best way to retrieve grouped information, which in our case is absolutely vital to the way the blog structures the articles. We will also retrieve the most recent topics and display them on the side bars for easy access. This will act as a shortcut for the user, when he or she wants a quick view of what the latest messages are about.
The index page sends two values over to the comments page. These values represent the categoryID and the article ID. They will be used to retrieve the article and its replies on the comments page; they will also be used to retrieve the category names, which are related to those articles.
Next: The Database Tables >>
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