Once you have run the file, we recommend that you immediately remove it from your server. You don t want anyone getting hold of your password. We also recommend that you change your password immediately. How It Works Your first step in creating this application is to connect to the database. Most of your pages will require this connection, so putting it in a separate included file is the best solution. The code in conn.php simply defines the constants, connects to the server, and then selects the database to be used. If you are using more than one database, then you simply need to change the mysql_select_db command to access the appropriate database before running any SQL commands. Take a look inside cmstables.php. First, you connect to the database. require_once conn.php ; Next, you create the table needed for access levels. All of the fields, their datatypes, and other parameters are defined in this SQL statement. You use IF NOT EXISTS so that the CREATE command does nothing if the table already exists. If you wanted CMStables.php to always create a new, clean version of the app, then you could remove the IF NOT EXISTS and run the SQL command DROP TABLE tablename before re-creating the table. $sql = <<You need excellent and relaible webhost company to host your web applications? Then pay a visit to Inexpensive Web Hosting services.

$adminemail = admin@yoursite.com ; $adminpass = admin ; $adminname = Admin ; $sql = INSERT IGNORE INTO cms_users . VALUES (NULL, $adminemail , $adminpass , $adminname , 3) ; $result = mysql_query($sql) or die(mysql_error()); echo ; echo CMS Tables created. Here is your initial login information:n ; echo

• login: . $adminemail .

n ; echo

• password: . $adminpass .

n ; echo Login to the site now. ; echo ?> 3. If you have not already done so, load cmstables.php in your browser. If it runs with no errors, you should see a screen similar to Figure 13-1. It will look a little different, of course, if you used your own e-mail and password values. Figure 13-1 419 Building a Content Management System
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) EOS; $result = mysql_query($sql) or die(mysql_error()); $sql = INSERT IGNORE INTO cms_access_levels . VALUES (1, User ), . (2, Moderator ), . (3, Administrator ) ; $result = mysql_query($sql) or die(mysql_error()); $sql = <<We recommend cheap and reliable webhost to host and run your web applications: Coldfusion Web Hosting services.

Registered users will also be able to post comments about an article. When a visitor views a full article, all comments will be displayed below it. Sound simple? You re going to do it with about 20 PHP pages. That may sound like a lot, but it s fairly typical of a standard Web application such as this. There are pages for display (index, admin, pending articles, article review, and so on), editing (compose, user account, control panel), and transaction files (for users and articles). There are also some files used as includes (such as header and footer). Don t worry some are only a few lines long. The whole application contains around 1,000 lines of code, which is pretty short by many application standards. Preparing the Database As mentioned, you ll have around 20 PHP pages. Enter each of these files in your favorite PHP editor, and save them with the given filename. We re going to give you the filename of each one, and introductions whenever necessary. Make sure all files are saved in the same directory on your Web server. The first thing you re going to do is create a database connection script, and then use that script to create your initial database structure. Let s do some coding. Try It Out Creating the Database Structure 1. The first file is conn.php. This file will go at the top of each page in the application where you need to connect to the database. Be sure to enter in your own host, username, password, and database. (If you don t have a database created yet, you ll need to create one first. Chapter 10 helps you with that if you need it.) 2. Now you need to create your database tables. You can do this on your MySQL server, or you can simply use the following file, named cmstables.php. It will create your tables, as well as insert your first user so that you can begin administering the site immediately. You need excellent and relaible webhost company to host your web applications? Then pay a visit to Inexpensive Web Hosting services.

In fact, all a Web site developer should ever have to do is maintain the site design itself (update some HTML, change a background color, fix a bug in the PHP code, for example). The content should be completely separate from the design of the site, and should be maintained by other people. Because the content is separate from the design, those content people don t have to know anything about Web site design! But once you have your content separated, you need to figure out how to manage it. Management Assuming you have a lot of content, entering it into your site will most likely take a lot of work. What you need to do is come up with a way to organize it, categorize it, and push the content to your Web site. You will need a number of people, each assigned a certain role, working together to create the content and mold it into the appropriate form for presentation on the Web site. Of course, you want this process to be efficient, and you definitely need to have the appropriate tools to do the job. System Chapter 10 showed you how to create your own databases and tables and how to create Web pages used to insert, delete, update, and retrieve the information in those tables. In Chapter 12, you learned how to authenticate and recognize your users by making them log in to your Web site. Armed with this knowledge, you could create a system of Web pages designed to allow users to create new content (authors), edit that content (editors), and publish it. By assigning users to certain roles, you can manage who has access to certain functions within the site. Putting It All Together So, it seems that you need a group of Web site pages and tables, and an organized set of rules, that will give you the means to gather information, format it, and present it to the world for its enjoyment. In other words, you need a system in place to allow you to manage your Web site content (separately from the site design). You need a Content Management System (or CMS, as we ll refer to it from now on). There are many degrees of content management. On some sites, this might simply refer to a message board, where users sign up to post messages to each other about their favorite color of lint. Another site might have reporters in the field writing news stories and sending them in to be published online. Yet another site might not only allow users to update content, but will allow administrators to change the layout of the site, including colors and images. As you have no doubt figured out, the term CMS refers not only to the application used to enter content, but to the people responsible for entering content, and to the rules they must follow. Without proper rules, and without the people to make it happen, no CMS application in the world is going to help you. It s up to you to find the people. We ll help you establish the rules. Are you ready? Good, let s get started. The CMS application you are going to build will allow registered users to post articles. Those articles will be labeled pending until a user with the proper permissions publishes the article. Once it s published, it will show up as the newest article on the home page. Unregistered users will be able to read articles but will not be able to post new ones. 416 Chapter 13
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13 Building a Content Management System Whatever the reason, people these days seem to get bored easily. One of your jobs as the Web site administrator is not only to figure out how to get as many people to visit your site as possible, but how to keep them there and keep them coming back. You can focus on many things to get the masses to your site, such as word of mouth, advertising, and search engines. To keep your users at your site, the experts give plenty of hints, such as making your site easy to navigate, making sure your pages load quickly, and giving users a personal experience. Getting your users to return, however, is how you keep your site going over time. Getting Your Users to Return Take a moment to think about all the sites you return to. You know . . . the ones you have saved in your bookmark list in your browser. With the exception of sites you have to visit, such as those in the research folder, what do most of those sites have in common? Most likely, each site periodically has new information. You might visit a news site each day or look up the weather in your area. Perhaps you are interested in your daily horoscope, or maybe you belong to an online message board and would like to read new posts. In each case, the content gets updated on a regular basis sometimes daily, sometimes weekly, and sometimes even hourly. Can you imagine how much work the Web site developers must have to do to update the content every day? Content No matter what the subject of your Web site is, it probably contains lots of content news, images, user comments, and more. You don t want to have to maintain all that content, do you? It would be very nice to offload some of that work to others.
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Summary By now, you have a good understanding of the power of PHP and its session and cookie functions, along with MySQL and database-driven information. With these two powerful programs, along with Apache, you have some great tools to further your Web development skills. Just think about the possibilities you can explore with all you learned in this chapter: . You can restrict access to files/directories via htaccess. . You can use PHP to accomplish the same as htaccess but with more control and functionality. . You can store user and admin information in a database to utilize database-driven logins. . You can create a registration system for users to sign up with the required and optional fields. . You can use cookies to retain login information between sessions. . You can create a navigation system dependent on whether or not a user has logged in. Exercises Use these exercises to sharpen your PHP session and cookie handling skills. 1. Create a hidden area that is only displayed to users that are logged in to your system. 2. Use cookies to retain some information for 30 minutes, dependent on logged users. 3. Create a system where certain users only have certain options, dependent on their user level. 413 User Logins, Profiles, and Personalization
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Now notice in Figure 12-17 that the admin logged in here is able to update the user but is not allowed to delete the user because you did a check with the first if statement to see what the admin s level is. Should Joe log in with a level of 1, he would see something similar to Figure 12-18. Figure 12-18 Depending on what link he chooses and whether he has a high enough admin level, the admin will be able to update or delete the user s account. To guard against an admin of lower level trying to navigate to the delete page and supply a user ID through the query string, you inserted this line of code: if ($_SESSION[ admin_level ] == 1 ) This checks the admin level and notifies the admin that he or she doesn t have privileges to delete a user s account. You then provide a link back to the admin area. Now that you have learned how to use database-driven information with an administration section, you should be on your way to creating login systems for your own personal site or for your clients. 412 Chapter 12
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How It Works This whole section is merely a rework of the user section built specifically for administrators only. The pages work the same, the sessions are used in the exact same manner, and all in all, it acts and works the same. Now we ll explain how a typical run through with an admin (we ll call him Joe) works. Some of the pages you keyed in don t really need explaining since they are very similar in the user s section, so we won t discuss those. When your administrator goes to the admin area, Joe is told whether or not he is logged in. If he is, he can go to his personal administration area where he is able to do whatever he is allowed to do. The authorization is the same as the previous exercise so you can refer to previous figures for examples of how those pages look. We will show you what screens look like when administrators with different levels log in and go to the admin area. You keyed in all the code needed to do every aspect of the admin section, but this functionality is very similar to the update and delete aspects of the user section so we won t cover those. When an admin with a privilege level of 2 logs in, the screen should look like the one in Figure 12-17. Figure 12-17 411 User Logins, Profiles, and Personalization
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9. Finally, create the ninth file, delete_user.php: ; echo (If you re browser doesn t support this, . click here) ; die(); } else { ?>

Admin Area

Are you sure you want to delete this user s account?
There is no way to retrieve your account once you confirm!

You don t have a high enough privilege to delete a user.
Click here to go back. 410 Chapter 12
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