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[SOLVED]How easy is it to redesign the UI of a PHP site?
Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2007 7:54 pm
by PhinCuddy
Hi,
I'm extremely new to PHP, and i've been asked to 'visually' redesign a website which is made entirely in PHP.
is this an easy task? i've been asked to keep the backend of the site untouched (which uses databases and PHP) and just apply visual changes to the site. this includes the actual page layout
i would really appreciate some tutorials which covers visual redesign (not structual) on websites
thnks :)
Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2007 9:35 pm
by Luke
Well, a site can not be "made entirely in PHP" because no matter how you look at it, in order for a browser to render anything, it needs (X)HTML/CSS. PHP can output that to the browser, but it can not replace it. If the site is built in any sort of decent manner, there will be some templates somewhere that you can edit. Maybe post the file structure of the site and we can help you further?
Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2007 11:06 pm
by nickvd
If the site is created with standards in mind, using CSS for all style, which is seperate from the html markup itself, AND it's just a true
visual change (as in colours, images, etc) you should only need to muck about in one or two css files.
However, if the html is heavily embedded in the php (as in echo "<body><table id='blahblha'>......"; It may be an... interesting task

)
Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 4:02 pm
by PhinCuddy
thank you both for your replies! i managed to have a better look at the site, and it seems there are only 4 pages in the root directory that i need to change (includes CSS file) and one page in another directory to connect to the databse. Thank god..didn't feel like going through 70+ pages !
thank you again

Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 10:19 pm
by aaronhall
If that's the case, it sounds like the HTML is embedded in the PHP scripts, and you'll probably have a lot of code to sift through. Have you had a chance to look at the contents of any of the files?
Posted: Wed Jan 10, 2007 7:17 am
by PhinCuddy
there is minimal html throughout, but i don't need to make changes to those as they are all tagged and referenced in the CSS file, and i'm able to make universal changes in there.
in the root directory there is:
- index.php (which has includes for the below 4 pages)
1.php (footer)
2.php (header and body [which includes the side menu])
3.php (meta tags)
4.php (link to CSS file and top menu)
styles.css
i'm not sure if that's clever designing or not, but i couldn't see why he just din't link the CSS in 3.php
so really, i only need to change 1.php 2.php and 4.php (with the obvious CSS). i'm finding PHP very simple to use, and i'm wondering why i never picked it up earlier!
Posted: Wed Jan 10, 2007 8:27 am
by matthijs
PhinCuddy wrote:so really, i only need to change 1.php 2.php and 4.php (with the obvious CSS). i'm finding PHP very simple to use, and i'm wondering why i never picked it up earlier!
Sounds good.
However, if I may, I would like to give a bit of advice: starting with PHP is indeed very easy. But coding secure is something else. Even the most simple script, if not coded correctly, can be misused to do the worst things. One include like $_GET['page'] wrongly used might allow a hacker to inject any code he (or she?) wishes.
So be careful. When in doubt, don't hesitate to post your code here so that others can have a look.
Posted: Wed Jan 10, 2007 5:45 pm
by PhinCuddy
hey thank you very much for that! i'm sure i'll be coming here a lot to ask for help.