Question

I have been asked to create a website and wanted to design it so that the user may add new blog posts to a news feed. I’ve tried this and successfully created a very simple blogging feature which adds/reads entries in a sql database.

However I want to dynamically create new webpages for each blog entry that is added by the user. How would I go about this? I am new to Php/Sql and so I am unsure of where to start. Any pointers in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.

As for an example of what im after, see: http://kingslandprimaryschool.co.uk/

Thanks

Answer 1

The solution is to hire an army of employees, who manually create hundreds of scripts. A lot of work, but what else can you do? Nah, just kidding.

The trick is not to create a new file for every blog page, you just have to change the routing. Start by creating a blogging system which works through consistent URL’s, such as blog.php?p=home. When you’ve finished, create a .htaccess file which routes certain requests to that page. For example, if you would want an URL like my.site/home to load blog.php?p=home you would need the following .htaccess script:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On

    # Allow existing directories and files
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f

    # Route the request
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ blog.php\?p=$1 [QSA]
</IfModule>

This would first check whether a file exists at the requested URL. If it does, it shows that file. Otherwise, blog.php?p=myPath is opened. The [QSA] tag after the redirect means that everything after the question mark is passed on to the script you redirect to, so if you would go to my.site/home?day=wednesday the page blog.php?p=home&day=wednesday would be loaded.

If you need more help, feel free to ask any question. Alternatively, you can just Google “htaccess mod_rewrite” or “PHP pretty url” for more information. Hope this was of help!