So what's new about the London Mensa Website?
Well, apart from the new look, quite a lot.
Much of the information on the site is held in a MySQL database and the webpages
to display it are being generated on the fly using PHP.
This allows the site to be much more dynamic, so sections of it can be created
and maintained by members without my involvement. Examples of this are the pages
under the "Contents" menu in the Members Only section. Each is "owned" by a
member who is able to edit them on-line.
So what's next?
Well, something that's been requested for a while are meeting
announcements with a shorter notice than the magazine requires.
Then the regular meeting announcements will get an overhaul. There's a lot more
information that can be displayed on-line than in the magazine.
Then there's an interactive gallery, a bulletin board... who knows. :)
Adrian
Here's some information about the components that the site is using.
PHP is a server side scripting language. Scripts run on the webserver which
interogate databases, XML files etc. and generate the web pages' HTML.
One advantage of this is security, none of the scripts are sent to the browser,
so the user is unable to see how they are working. Another is that the HTML can
be tailored for a the browser that is requesting it.
This allows the same page to render sensibly in Netscape, Mozilla, Explorer and
even text-only browsers like Lynx.
From their website:
"The MySQL database server is the world's most popular open source database.
Its architecture makes it extremely fast and easy to customize.
Extensive reuse of code within the software and a minimalistic approach to
producing functionally-rich features has resulted in a database management
system unmatched in speed, compactness, stability and ease of deployment.
The unique separation of the core server from the table handler makes it
possible to run with strict transaction control or with ultra-fast
transactionless disk access, whichever is most appropriate for the situation."
I couldn't agree more. :)
Apache is the most popular webserver on the internet. Over 60% of websites are
hosted using it.
The London Mensa site is hosted by 1&1.
