Righto feel free to shoot me down in flames with this one. I've been designing websites for a while but only using GoLive. I have a little personal project just starting, purely for a bit of fun on my part. I found a script that fits what I want to achieve nicely, problem is I have no idea how to implement it. Im so used to working in index.html files.

Simple question I suppose, how do I implement an index.php file into something I can see and design with? Do I link it to a index.html file somehow?

Am I making sense? Am I wasting my own and your time?

Open the index.php file in dreaweaver, frontpage or even notepad and you can edit its design.

Hi mate. I opened it in GoLive CS and all that appears is a little php icon. I go to source or open it in Textedit and the code starts as below (I wont post the whole thing, its huge and the original owner might not be happy):

<?php

require_once("libs/smarty/Smarty.class.php");

require_once("common/controlerex.php");

require_once("common/configuration.php");

require_once("common/phorum.php");

require_once("common/users.php");

require_once("common/tools.php");

require_once("common/voting.php");





define("__INCORRECT_CODE", 2);

define("__INCORRECT_PASSWORD", 4);

define("__INCORRECT_PASSWORD", 8);

define("__INCORRECT_TITLE", 16);

define("__INCORRECT_FILE", 32);

define("__INCORRECT_NUM_OF_ANSWERS", 64);



class Index extends Controler {

var $id;

var $parentId;

var $childId;

var $categoryId;

var $body;

var $mc;

var $title;

var $topItems;

var $page;

var $isAdmin;

var $_phorum;

var $code;



var $username;

var $password1;

var $password2;



var $pages;

var $page;



/* cintact form */

var $name;

require_once("libs/smarty/Smarty.class.php");

require_once("common/controlerex.php");

require_once("common/configuration.php");

require_once("common/phorum.php");

require_once("common/users.php");

require_once("common/tools.php");

require_once("common/voting.php");


That bit ^ is loading different files. So your index.php appears to be mix of other php pages, try looking at all the requires and all the includes listed on the page to find the bit you want to edit.

OK I see what you mean, only thing is no matter how I try it never shows me a preview at all. When I open the index.php file in a browser its just a bunch of jibberish text.

I'll keep trying, thanks for the input so far.

Righto Im getting somewhere now. I have the homepage up, but when I try to use any link on the page it is linking to non-existant pages. For example the homepage is index.php but on the template 'home' links to index.html, the same for all the other links..all to html pages. Now would these be dynamically created? As they arent included in the script I bought Im assuming they are either dynamically created or I need to create the html page and include some script to tell the page to use the php files?

oh dear.

What is the code? In some .php pages, not all the codding is php, and with a little tweaking you can change it easily. The thought from the script provider was most liekly that you had a bit of prior knowledge, so that you could manually edit the links. I think the index.html is a preset value that can be changed, unless I am reading that wrong.

if you have found a nice little script, i see there its using smarty template engine, see if theres some sort of template files

you should be able to edit what your page looks like to an extent in those

yeah I think Im in over my head with this one. I tried editing the links from .html to .php and linking them to the php files but the page just displays the code. So Im not sure if I need to create the .html pages and somehow get them to load the .php.

Ive managed to edit the template pages now so Im seeing what I want to see in the index page. I'll keep plugging away. Thanks for the replies!

The site Im playing with is a confession type site, I get the impression that the php should be creating pages for me. If someone makes a confession then the php creates the html page for that confession. So when you link to it the link says something like 'showthread_13.html' 13 being the page number. God Im lost. Ah well.

No disrepect intended.

May I suggest that you look within the group of files that you downloaded for a file named readme, intstall instructions or something similar. The file may end with .txt, html, htm. Actually any file that does not end in php or sql may be the file with the directions.

Most script witers include some quick start directions.

None taken. There is a read me but its quite basic, tells me how to set up the config.php file and the database bits. Im sure Im missing something really really basic, but I jsut cant see it. Im prepared to send the script to someone by email if they would have a look at it for me just to point me in the right direction.

Maybe you should point us to where you found the script in the first place, the documentation will probably mention where the templates are located.