Dynamic/database beginners advice

telemachus

I'd really apreciate any pointers as up until now i've almost soley used static pages with the odd bit of javascript and i'm a bit lost at present, i'm happy to work at and learn new techniques myself i'm just not entirely sure which of these I should be working at.

I started off with a static site built around a simple mail form for sandwich orders (the idea behind the site was just to turn emails into faxes in a cafe) and all the customer verification and order confirms were handled by the email/fax software based on subject lines etc which corresponded to boxes the user filled in on the mail form.

I'm now trying to work out a way to make orders more siteside processed, ie initially some kind of username/password sign in which would then lead onto the order box (user name/number/confirm email etc being added to hidden form fields based on preadded data linked to the username and password). My aim would be to cut down on the amount of fields the user has to enter and give an immediate response if say the username was incorrectly entered. At a later stage (skills permitting) i'd probably look at turning it into a more commerce type/shopping basket system, but that would be down the road.

As far as I can see (and i'm relatively clueless when it comes to database solutions) the most obvious solution would be some implementation of php/mysql, but beyond that i'm hazy, should I be looking at learning php from the ground up and creating a custom system to do this, or is there some kind of cms or script solution I could modify? I'm really not sure where to start so any pointers in the right direction would be much apreciated.

telemachus

Just looking at various php sign-in and redirect on succesfull sign in scripts is it possible to retrieve the information entered on the intial sign in page? As in $_GET' as a hidden form field, how would I go about carrying the the data over from the sign in page to the order form?

hostyle

telemachus wrote:

Just looking at various php sign-in and redirect on succesfull sign in scripts is it possible to retrieve the information entered on the intial sign in page? As in $_GET' as a hidden form field, how would I go about carrying the the data over from the sign in page to the order form?

echo '<input type="hidden" name="username" value="' . $_GET['username'] . '" />

telemachus

Ah cheers for that, i'm pretty clueless when it comes to php. There isn't anyway to get the active signed in username to echo as a variable in a mambo installation is there, all the usernames would be in the mysql database but i'm not sure how to get the active one, is it accesible from a cookie or somesuch?

Heh apologies I seem to have worked out my own question eventually, i needed to install the kl_php mambot to insert php into mambo content, and to get the username variable as far as I can tell it's : global $my; echo $my->username;