Layout & Coding Advice Needed Please

MeatProduct

Hello,

I've been a bit out of touch with the latest web practices and dynamic content creation techniques and would love some advice on a website I'm developing at the moment.

It's a website that will have a bunch of products (for purchase via the website) on it as well as dynamic content.

Firstly I would like to know a good method for having a dynamic area on a page (PHP?) while the rest of the page remains static.

Secondly is it a good idea to use PHP/MySQL to maintain all the products on the website which are sold via PayPal?

Thirdly, would I be better off making it into a Drupla theme, would be it a faster method of creating this site?

Fairly basic questions for most of you I'm sure but I would greatly appreciate your comments as I'm on shaky ground with this.

I've attached a layout guide to the front page to show what I mean.

Thank you!

Nick

daymobrew

I suggest Zen Cart. It has a good template system which will allow you to customise the page as you need and it has a great collection of add-ons to put things like news in there.

nikimere

I would suggest either making your flash banner/animation a little smaller in height, or, put the navbar above it. On a low resolution screen the navbar is going to be halfway if not more on the page. Navbar should always be relatively close to the top of the page.
Just mho...

MeatProduct

Thank you both for your suggestions. Checking out ZenCart now daymobrew.

Nikimere, thank you for your suggestion. I am seriously considering it. The flash area is a bit big but it needs to be for various reasons.

With the dynamic areas, presumably I could just use php/mysql to bring up the dynamic content on that page?

I'm thinking I'll avoid a CMS now as it's probably overkill and I could manage the product database in a simple mysql db and use PayPal to sell the products?

Nick

nikimere

MeatProduct wrote: »

With the dynamic areas, presumably I could just use php/mysql to bring up the dynamic content on that page?

Absolutely, i wouldn't bother with a CMS unless you plan on using most of it's functionality. A simple products table in MySQL with PHP displaying the individual products you'll be fine.

Chardee MacDennis

nikimere wrote: »

I would suggest either making your flash banner/animation a little smaller in height, or, put the navbar above it. On a low resolution screen the navbar is going to be halfway if not more on the page. Navbar should always be relatively close to the top of the page.
Just mho...

true, reminds me of SiliconRepublic.com; it drives me nuts that i have to scroll nearly an entire windows length to get to the content....

MeatProduct

Points taken about the nav bar. I've tried it out how it is on top. It does affect the design in a bad way unfortunately. The design is based on the ratio phi and harmonics of it so that each area must be a specific dimension.

However I must be careful that the site is still practical so I'm attempting to move the nav bar to the top in a way that doesn't upset the underlying geometries, not east right now.

Nikemere, I'm gonna run with that php/mysql solution and implement Zen Cart as daymobrew suggested. I like the control Zen offers since this site will have occasional special offers accross the whole product range. While that would be pretty easy to do with php I reckon it's not worth doing the extra work when a solution already exists that is open source and freely available.

Thank you,

Nick