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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-11T14:54:34+00:00

Let’s try to explain the title of my question to be the more concise

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Let’s try to explain the title of my question to be the more concise I can: I’m basically designing a static HTML website from scratch. Nothing to worry about here.

The point is that I’m trying to include some links that will retrieve some items (a product inventory) from a database (and therefore the site won’t be so ‘static’ anymore), as there’re > 300 products and creating an html for each one is not feasible.

After googling and reading several sites for days, the “easiest” solution I came up with is to use PHP and MySQL. Again, nothing to worry about. Just took my time for reading documentation and move along.

My question is more related about the correct workflow for integrating both worlds. Let’s see my idea in code:

This is one schematic example of the page where you can browse some products (e.g: product.html):

<html>
<head>
<title>My Site - These are our products</title>
</head>
<body>
    <!--Site goes here-->
    <a href="product_search_by_name.php">Search by name</a>
    <a href="product_search_by_color.php">Search by color</a>
    <!--rest of site goes here-->
</body>

</html>

Where the links

product_search_by_name.php
product_search_by_color.php

are actually a modified clone of the same page (product.html). This is, keeping same html code, plus the .php code embedded into it, as I want to have the DB results displayed into a div on that same page, keeping exactly same layout.

So, am I doing this right if I want to maintain the appearance of the whole website? I’m absolutely wrong from the base and should start again? Should I give up and work selling frappuchinos on a Star*ucks?

As a sample of the idea I want to achieve is the following: http://www.w3schools.com/tags/default.asp (when you click on the left menu bar, the center zone updates with the content). By the way, are they using AJAX on that website to update just the center zone, or I’m misunderstanding what is AJAX for?

I’m sure I’m missing something but I’m too confused to separate the sheep from the goats, so I’d thank a lot any tips you can give to me (and additional documentation on the internets to read as well).

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    There are two main ways to merge or migrate from static HTML to dynamic HTML (PHP, PERL, whatever).

    (1) One is to have most of the contest as HTML, and the stuff like inventory as dynamic.

    <html>
<head>
<title>My Site - These are our products</title>
</head>
<body>
  <h1>My Site - These are our products</h1>

  <?php
  // php code to retrieve links
  ?>

</body>
</html>

    (2) To have a full PHP site.

    <?php
echo "<html>" . "\n";
echo "<head>";
echo "My Site - These are our products"
echo "</head>";


echo "<body>" . "\n";
  // php code to retrieve links
echo "</body>" . "\n";

echo "</html>" . "\n";
?>

    Many developers start by merging both HTML & PHP.

    I suggest to learn how to do a very simple but full php site, connect to a database, retrieve some records with a S.Q.L. query, display them as read-only text or links, and later you may change to the other HTML plus PHP way of doing things.

    There are several editors and tools to help develop in PHP, specially by looking for a PHP function, or just highlight HTML tags. Scintilla (Linux) or Notepad++ in windowze, its a very simple yet useful tool.

    Cheers.

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