Summary

Chapter 5 - Beginning Site Development
byGareth Downes-Powellet al.
Wrox Press 2003

In this chapter we have explored the fundamentals of setting up your MySQL database for our example site. The lessons learned here can easily be implemented across your own sites, as the principles and techniques detailed remain relevant regardless of the site being developed.

We've learned new MySQL techniques, by exploring the power of the command-line, an often feared but extremely powerful tool, and seen how an installation of MySQL on our development machine can be beneficial even if our MySQL database is on another machine, as the associated tools and utilities, such as the MySQL Monitor, can be a great bonus.

From setting up the database we have begun to design our example site - The Dreamweaver Hotel, and have designed and implemented a template and a library object that allow us to have central control over the site's look, without having to worry about the difficulties of updating a great number of pages for a minor design change.

Finally we've explored the possibilities and benefits of using templates when creating a web site, and have briefly looked at the new advanced templating techniques that are available only within Dreamweaver MX.

Now that we've done all this, we're ready to begin developing web pages that interact with our database, using the power of PHP, MySQL, and Dreamweaver.