Build It and They Will Come - PHP

Once you get the site engine up and running you are going to want to make a site with it. But wait! You should first build something that no one but you, or other site administrators, will see -- the administration site.

Of course you're not going to want to update two database tables every time you make a new block; that's why you'll want to build a simple site that has the entire front end for doing that. When the site engine is all finished, it's pretty much just some HTML here and there to make your admin site. Then when you're ready to run another website off the site engine, all you have to do is make the template and block files, upload them to the server and then simply go to your admin site, login, fill out a form to add the site, then fill out the forms to initialize the plug-ins and modules (which can be reused for each site so you don't have the have duplicate plug-ins and modules), fill out a form to add the blocks and that's about it -- the site's up running and ready to go.

Now that I've hopefully explained what the site engine does, how it does it and why, I think you'll have a good understanding of what's to come in the following articles. They'll go into further detail and explanations on each of the four previously outlining sections. However if you're kind of lost on the whole subject, I still encourage you to keep a look out for the next four parts to this series, as I'm sure they'll shed a bit more light on the subject of how to create a site engine.