WHITNEY-L Archives

Archiver > WHITNEY > 2000-01 > 0947101084


From: Tim Doyle <>
Subject: [WHITNEY-L] WRG Photo Archives
Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2000 13:38:04 -0600


Hello everyone:

I am working on revamping a script which I wrote about two years ago.
This script will allow anyone to add, change or delete an entry which
would include a photograph and identifying information. When an entry is
added, the submitter applies a password to the entry, ensuring that no
one else (other than myself) can modify the entry. Also, any submittals
would have to be approved by myself before appearing on the index page.
This assures that we don't get some prankster attempting to place an
advertisement or inappropriate materials on our site. Since the use and
design for our site is somewhat different than what the script was
originally written for, I would like to ask for opinions on a few things.
Please respond to me directly at so as not to clutter the
list.

1. What fields should be available? Here is what I plan on:

Submitter Name
Submitter E-mail address
Name of file to be uploaded
Description of the photograph

Any others? I had thought about a field for the lineage of the
individual, but I think that this could be just as easily put in the
description. Although I could add many fields for date, location,
lineage, etc. this would make the resulting display much harder to read
for most entries, so I am inclined to just have one description field
which could include any of this identifying information.

2. When someone requests to edit an entry, they are presented with a
short list of all existing entries. To do this, I need to have a short (5
to 10 character) unique field. What should I use? A catalogue number such
as WRG00001 which would be assigned automatically? Should I let the user
enter something in a 'short description' field? Should I take the first
10 characters from the description? If I use the catalogue number, the
list presented will not be very identifying, unless the number was
written down previously from the main index page. If I use a short
description, these can be pretty arbitrary and meaningless. If I use the
first 10 characters from the description, I would have to strip spaces
and special characters out, and then what happens when the description is
changed at a later date?

If anyone has any ideas on how I should approach this, please drop me a
line. Hopefully the script that I come up with will be able to be used on
other sites as well as our own.

Thanks!

Tim

- -------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Doyle -

WWW homepage: http://www.doit.com/tdoyle/
ftp directory: ftp.doit.com pub/tdoyle

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