PHP and MySQL for Client-Server Database Interaction

Learning Goal: I’m working on a internet marketing question and need an explanation and answer to help me learn.

For some time now you have had a Products +Services link, or a similar link, on the homepage of your business. Previously that link would have simply taken you to a static web page display showing what your business offers for sale. Now you must make that page dynamic, as outlined in the following exercises.

1. Your Products +Services (or analogous) link must be converted to a dropdown menu list, and the first option on that list must take the user to a new page showing the various categories of products and/or services your business offers for sale, analogous to the page display seen in Figure 10.24. Each of the links on this page will, in turn, be attached to a PHP script that connects to your database, retrieves the necessary product and/or service information for all the products and/or services in a particular category, and displays this information for the user in a new page, using an appropriate format.
2. Design and implement the necessary PHP scripts for the “back-end” processing required to implement the functionality described in exercise 1 above. As a minimum, your website should allow the user to see a full “catalog” list of all categories of products and services that you offer, and clicking on a “category link” should produce a suitable display of all products in that category.
3. Depending on the time available, you should also try, or your instructor may require you, to pursue one or more additional features illustrated in this chapter, which include registering with your business, logging in, and conducting an online session in which several products or services are chosen for purchase, followed by an appropriate “check out” process. You should be able to adapt our scripts for your own particular needs to implement analogous functionality for your own website. The options you should try to implement would be those additional options you see on the Products +Services dropdown menu of the Nature’s Source website.