Thread: Possible to have live updates?

Hi all :)

I help attorneys with legal cases. I would like attorneys to be able to go to my website and view the status of the cases. I currently keep track of this information (for my own reference) on an Excel sheet....I have not a clue how to go about this or even what this would be called (I'm sure there's a proper name or term for this)....any help or direction would be appreciated.

Might be worth having a read up on RSS feeds for your site. BV has this facility built in.

or you can have a forum such as this and they can participate in...with a rss feed also.

I read up on the RSS feeds but I'm not sure how they would help me....perhaps I'm missing something. What I'd like to do is keep my excel sheet and have it on my website. I'm hoping that I can do something where I update the excel sheet and it updates automatically on my website...is this possible?

Yes, quite possible, but you need a specific script that will "read" the file content (actually needs to be exported as CSV from Excel) and then display the info in the user's page. Usually this is done easier with a database and a member's script so that users can only see their own pages and not other's.

If your using xl? Google docs might also be worth a look as you can have it private or public with either you as a sole editor/contributor or multi users contributing.

I've checked out google docs but I'd rather have the info directly on my website. Attorneys tend to be very busy and impatient. I've created a subdomain for each attorney on my website and each subdomain is password protected so the attorney must have his username and password to enter his site.

Navaldesign, can you please tell me what to do? I know how to save excel docs in csv format....what do I do next? Is there a program I use? Or do I enter this stuff through my cpanel in bv?

I'm afraid that the required script is rather complicated if you have no programming experience.

What you actually need is a member's script, PLUS a script that will display, in each member's page, only HIS cases / info.

As mentioned, the easiest way to do this is by using a database rather than a Excel file. You could update directly the database instead of the excel file, then you can download at any moment, the database contents, as Excel file if you wish to have a local copy.

OH! I see now.....so I need a database......is this the same database that can be added in the cpanel of bv? If so, I have added one but now don't know what to do....now that I've created the database, how do I access it?

The problem is not the database, it only takes a minute or so to create one. A database is nothing more than a storage spage.

The problem is having the necessary scripts that will use this database. The membership script I mentioned and the other one that will diaply the info in the member's page.

These need to be custom built for your purpose, as this is a specific application, not a generic one, so there aren't any ready to use ones.

Oh I get it....ok.....I guess I'll check out the forum idea then.....