Using PHP and MySQL to Develop a Simple CMS

In version 1 of our simple CMS we introduced the following four files:

* cms.sql
* updatePage.htm
* updatePage.php, and
* index.php

Together, these files formed a very simple CMS, which you can download from the following address:

http://www.computernostalgia.net/downloads/cms_v1.zip

In this article we'll extend the CMS slightly so that the database contents are extracted and presented in the form (UpdatePage.htm). This will make it easier to edit the contents, rather than simply overwriting them.

In order to make this modification, updatePage.htm needs to become a PHP file. I've called it editPage.php because updatePage.php already exists.

Here is the contents of editPage.php:

1. < html >
2. < head >
3. < title >Really Simple CMS< /title >
4. < /head >
5. < body >
6. < h1 >Really Simple CMS< /h1 >
7. < ?php
8. mysql_connect("localhost", "root", "password");
9. $result = @mysql_query("SELECT contents from cms.page");
10. while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)){
11. $contents = $row['contents'];
12. }
13. ? >
14. < form name="form1" method="post" action="updatePage.php" >
15. Enter page content:< br >< textarea rows="10" cols="60" name="contents" >< ?php echo "$contents" ? >< /textarea >

16. < input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Update Page" >
17. < /form >
18. < /body >
19. < /html >

Most of this file is fairly simple HTML that doesn't need explaining. However, the following bits of code are probably worth discussing.

Lines 7 through to 13 containt PHP code to connect to the database and extract the contents of the web page.

Line 15 contains a tiny bit of PHP code to display the contents in the form's textarea. This line shows how easy it is to integrate bits of PHP code into lines of HTML code.

Remember though that in order to use PHP code in an HTML page, the file has to have an extension of .php.

All of the files for version 2 of the CMS are available at:

http://www.computernostalgia.net/downloads/cms_v2.zip

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