Web Development Database driven sites

Database driven web site design & development

Databases are your friends.

Glossary of Terms
Data
Database
HTML pages
Dynamic web pages and programming
Uses for database driven web sites
Examples of database driven web sites
Search engines and database driven web sites

We thought you might like to look over the components of a web site that has been developed to deliver content and features from a database.

Data The information you want to display or gather is called data.

display: If you wanted someone to order one of the great fishing lures you sell in your online store, you would want to display the lures, their prices, descriptions and pictures.

gather: You would want to gather from your new friend who wants your lures the info you'll need to get them there... Now you need somewhere to keep, or serve as a base, for all of this data:

Databases

These little guys come in a variety of sizes. In a database your information is stored in what you might think of as compartments called tables. Your database can grow from one to many tables depending on the complexity of the information you're handling.

Currently Microsoft SQL, MySQL and PostGreSQL are popular relational SQL databases developed for holding large amounts of data.

HTML Pages

You'll have some regular web pages written in HTML that display the text and graphics of your web site. If you click "View Source" on your browser, you'll see this page's HTML code.

Here's the HTML code for the title of this page you see displayed in the top of your browser:

Now for the exciting part!

Dynamic Web Pages

Dynamic web pages add power to your web site

To put stuff into your database, and to get it out later, you need some dynamic web pages that we create for you that will do these things by talking to the machine where your site lives in a language, or programming such as VBScript or PHP, in a way that she understands.

Your database and the programming code we develop for your web pages work together to produce the information your users will give you or get from you on your web site's pages, as well as display pictures and descriptions that match the user's search.

We specialize in dynamic database-driven web sites to provide online services for your site's visitors as well as providing dynamic content that will be up to date and fresh for your readers.

Uses for database-driven web sites

Unlike search engines which search the words written on a web page, database driven web sites seek their information in a fixed database so that we can present exactly the information the user is seeking in a neat, orderly fashion.

• password protection for membership web sites
• present catalogs of products or services
• listings according to specific information
• specific information based on what the user has entered for a search term
• entries users have posted that other users may retrieve
• pricing, description and ordering information for eCommerce
• dynamic content management
• validating user input

Database-driven web sites currently online

These Sophia Solutions web sites are examples of database-driven web sites we've developed for our clients to suit their specific needs. You may view projects we've developed for clients in our portfolio.
View Portfolio

Because of their great functionality for web site content management, Sophia Solutions has specialized in database-driven web site development.

Search Engines and database-driven web sites

One of the things we've discovered about database-driven web sites is that if they are set up properly, the search engines love them. Search engines are looking for information and they, just like us, want to be efficient and get their jobs completed. When they find a web site that serves up many listings for a given subject from a database it makes them feel happy because they've done the jobs they were designed to do.

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May, 2009