Thread: How to create a form that links to a basic SQL database

Hello,

I'm new to this BV community and attempting to build my first website. I have watched the tutorials and read many, many threads but I have not found what I'm looking for. My goal is to create a very basic form that I can use to register customers on my eventual website. I envision storing this basic information in a SQL database behind the curtain. I am struggling to understand how to achieve this. I know how to create a form and I know how to create the database from CP but I do not know how to link the two together. Now, I admit that I am brand new to this website design world as well, although I'm a good learner. However, if this task is still too complicated for someone just starting out, then please let me know. I'm hoping it's not that complicated because it would be a great feature for me to include on my site. I posted another thread about having a private page that would require a login name and password. I envision these two things being related. Once a customer registers and I can retain their information, I can issue a login name and password that would provide them access to my private page.

If there is anything you can do to assist me in creating this form / database link, I would very much appreciate it.

Thanks!!

You need to use a script to interact between the submitted form data and the database. Navaldesign has a script available that will take the submitted form and store it into a database.

If you were to program your own you would need to learn a programming language like php or cgi. Depending on how quick of a learner you are and if you have done any programming before it could take anywhere from a few weeks to a couple months to get the basics downs.

Even then there are still issues like security and validation issues among other things that you have to keep in mind when your writing the scripts.

If you are interested in learning how to write you own scripts here are some resources

http://w3schools.com
http://tizag.com
http://php.net

There are some good tutorials and documentation at these sites... Google is also a very good tool when looking for code samples of how to do something.