Introduction

When Tommy Banh and I became heavily entrenched in the Hardware Pros site, it began to consume more and more of our time. Not only did we go to school full time, but we now had a job that took a good 30+ hours a week with very little pay. After a while, performing manual updates to the site, especially daily news, became a repetitive, time consuming, almost annoying task. I wanted to make it easier on ourselves, so I started looking into database driven, template sites. I came across PHP Nuke and some other packages which made web site administration easier. The problem with most of these systems is that you have very little flexibility with the templates, and I wanted our site to keep its unique look. So, I ventured into the wonderful world of PHP and MySQL and started writing our database backend, and site administration front end. Unfortunately, the Hardware Pros site was pulled out from under our noses (our host decided to abruptly close up shop without warning). Consequently, I decided to concentrate more on school, and the PHP Website Admin project was put on the backburner. So, as you can imagine, it's not complete, but it does have some functionality and I may pick it up again someday, because I think php is a great language, and this stuff is what I enjoy doing most.

Features

  • Fully Database driven (MySQL only).
  • Database Management:
    • Check tables for errors
    • Optimize tables
  • Three user classes with hierarchial permissions:
    • Administrator
    • Regular
    • Editor
  • User's online (displays other users working on site).
  • Add/Edit news posts directly to front page of site.
  • Ability to preview news before posting.
  • Add/Edit Reviews to site
  • Archive News
  • Style Shee support.
  • User Management
    • Add/Edit/Delete Users (Admin Only)
    • Reset Password (Admin Only)
    • Edit your own profile
  • Session Management using cookies.

Not Yet Implemented

  • Product Review Entry Interface
  • Generalize as much as possible (non-domain specific)
  • Allow for other database backends besides MySQL.
  • In addition to style sheets, allow for user customizable HTML templates for pages.
  • Poll Adminstration (allow for creating new voting polls and closing them after a certain amount of time)
  • Auto-Archiving (archive news based on data span or number of posts)
  • User Messaging (be able to message other users editing the site to make to coordinate activities).
  • Editing of user permissions (hard coded right now)

 

DEMO

To view a demo of the system, click here and login with the following information:

user: test
password: test123