This is gonna get complicated

M

m60dude5

Geek Trainee
Hi. I have a ton of HTML experience, a lot of CSS, some Javascript, but no PHP, SQL, etc.

What I Have:
I have a folder, with about 200 files

What I Want To Do With Them:
I want the server to create 200 web pages, and one that contains a master list that links to its respective file's html page. I want the server to do this automatically, since files will be added in the future, and I don't have time to make 200 pages.

Step 2:
On each of the 200 individual pages, I want there to be a link that says: "Download Here"

Step 3:
I also want there to be a sort of Forum under the file name so that users can post messages and reply to others.

Explanation:
We are a design company that has tons of AutoCad files in a folder on the server. I am creating an intranet to do the above work. We need a way for each of the engineers to be able to "talk" with one another about specific projects. I figured the best way to do this would be to create a forum so that everyone working on the project could see other's ideas etc. before downloading, and could respond.

Thanks for your time and I'll understand if no one replies to this.
 
It's difficult to explain this if you don't have a grounding in PHP, but if you think about it carefully you'll see what I mean.

You can implement this system with a database or without, using an SQL database means you'll have to input the file details of your existing files when you set up the system, and then all future additions to the file collection will also need to have been entered into the database.

Using PHP, you can then write a simple script then lists all the files in the database, and then link to another PHP script that will display the details of the specified file.

If you want to do this without a database, a more unconventional way would be to use PHP to fetch a list of all files of a specific type in the directory, and then display the page that way. Using this method, you won't be able to add any more statistical functionality since there's no database to store it, but if you don't need to then it should suffice.

The parameter to the script (non-master) would have to be the filename, and you will need to make sure there are no spaces in the filename since it will be embedded in the URL.

As for the forum feature, you can use a ready built solution such as PHPBB etc, but you will need to create a separate thread yourself whenever you add a new file. you can of course write your own basic forum which can be smoothly integrated with this system, but this will take more time and effort.
 
Hi. Thanks for the informative reply. I understand what you are saying, just not how I would do it. But I'm not going to have you explain how, since I don't know PHP. I will attempt to learn that language in the near future, thanks again for the reply.
 
Why not implement a CMS that allows uploading and listing of files?

I've been using Drupal recently and you could upload and manage files with that, it has forum features, as well as allowing comments on pages, each file could be it's own page, with a description and information about it. Drupal also handles revisions to pages, so when a new version is made notes can be made about it.
 
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