Topic: need some advice on approach to something please :) (Page 1 of 1)

I have a potential customer that I am going to be redoing his site (it needs it real bad).
Currently, he has a link on his site and wants me to replicate it for his customers.

This will be a template that will be "branded" for what ever customer that wants to use it.

Here is his site : http://carolinacustombooth.com/
Now, on the left menu, scroll down to "NEW! Fabrics" and click it. It goes to the CFStinson site but is "branded" for his site.

What he is wanting his link to do, is no big deal. I can handle that. What I am more concerned about is how to "brand" it for all the customers without getting too bogged down on files and folders on the server.

If you notice on that link it takes you to : http://select.cfstinson.com/Finishes/SampleRoom.jsp?lid=7213

Would it just be best to use PHP and make a unique ID for each customer. Something like "lid=7213" on that site. Calling that ID would pull in the logo and whatever else? Maybe they want to change the color or whatever and I could code a style sheet for X customer.

Hope that all makes sense. Any and all help is appreciated!!

Thanks!

Later,

C:\

I've always found the best way to skin a site for various clients using the same codebase is to separate the URLs as well. QUerystrings can be screwed up by the client and should never be mission critical. I'd go with <client_name>.<url>.com to segregate it more.

-S

So, my advice would be to use sub domains, a templating engine, and get php to load the appropriate templates based on the sub domain.

Thanks. Sub domains it is.

TP, I know we talked about it via icq but

quote:

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Tyberius Prime said:

a templating engine,

---

What do you mean by that? I had it in my head at first that i would have to put the same pages in each subdomain and just change the appropriate images (logo, anything else). This just seemed to be over kill.

I was thinking that the main "template" would reside on the main domain. But then i couldn't get my head around how to change the template images and such. I am probably just making this harder than what it needs to be

Later,

C:\

OK...I think I got what you mean. Something like Smarty Templates?

Never used it before but I can figure that out. Or do you have another engine in mind that might be of a better choice. Seems that Smarty still has a pretty large following and support.

Later,

C:\

Smarty is just great. It has my support.

Of course, you could just write your own to your own specifications, which is vastly more entertaining. Barring that, Smarty is the best templating engine out there presently, in terms of setup time, documentation, and functionality.

-S

quote:

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CPrompt said:

OK...I think I got what you mean. Something like Smarty Templates?

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Yup, that's what I'd use.

Great! Thanks a bunch both of you for your help.

Later,

C:\

On a side note, I just started using Smarty for an internal project here at work.

I'm not fond of templating engines in general, but I must admit Smarty is quite nice.

OK. I have been working with Smarty for a couple of days and reading the documentation and such. I ran into a snag and I am having a hard time getting my head around this.

is there a "smart" way to just change the content based on the link?

I know it sounds stupid but...I can't figure this out. I am used to using a switch statement in PHP to pull in the page. I typically just put the pages in different directories and call them up.

directory1
     page1
     page2
     page3

directory2
     page1
     page2
     page3

but how to accomplish this in Smarty is making my head hurt.
I know you can include a file as in :

index.php

$smarty->assign('Sectionfile','page1.html');

index.tpl

{include file="../directory1/$Sectionfile"}

any help is appreciated. Thanks

Later,

C:\

you know what....I sound like a freakin idiot. I got it now.

the only thing that now concerns me is that with the hosting that this company uses, does not let me add a directory outside of the document root.

Later,

C:\