Hi, I have a wordpress site on lawyers that has a couple of articles on it. I also have a database of thousands of lawyers that has their contact information, location, ect. How can i create a separate static page for each city in the database? For example, I would like to have a "Chicago" page that would list all of the lawyers in Chicago, (maybe 20 per page). Is there a script that would allow me to do this? I'd hate to have to create every city page manually then browse my database adding each lawyer 1 by 1 (but i will if I have to If I had to pay somebody to set this script up for me, what do you think it might cost? Thanks
I would just write a database program to extract the data in the database and then use the same program to write the pages. In fact that is exactly what I do with my website - I have over 30,000 items in my database and over 5,000 webpages to display them. I simply expanded my database program to have it write the HTML code to make the pages as well as all supporting pages. Then I upload the the finished pages. Takes about 4 hours to generate and upload all 5,000+ pages and I never need to test or debug the pages. If I had to do all 5,000+ pages by hand, it would take me over 3 YEARS to do them the first time, and YEARS later I would have a full-time job just keeping them current. And that is not counting time for testing, debugging, and corrections. As it is, I spend about 2 hours per day updating and adding new information. And I let my database program design the pages, create the correct links, etc. Since your pages only include static info (no internal links, for example) it should be quite simple for you to write a script in whatever database program you are using to generate the pages. Doing it by hand would be a horrendous job. And keeping it current would be no better. Should not cost a whole lot since it is so straightforward and not complex like my pages are. Took me roughly 100 hours 5 years ago to write and debug my script, but then the links, HTML, etc are extremely complex in my case, and not something I would expect a novice to write.
Thanks mmerlinn Would it be possible to do something like that inside of wordpress? I have looked around for a plugin but i'm not too sure of the keywords i should use to search:s These are the columns in the database bizID bizCat bizCatSub bizName bizAddr bizCity bizState bizZip bizPhone bizFax bizEmail bizURL locAreaCode locFIPS locTimeZone locDST locLat locLong locMSA locPMSA locCounty
So you need to integrate that lawyers database with wp ? You won't find any plugin to do this, you'll need to find someone to write a custom script for it. I can do this for you if you still need it...
I have never used WP, so have no idea whether or if you could do it with WP. Personally, I hate canned programs. They typically will not do my job. And every HTML generator I have ever used was very hard to use and generated extremely bloated code. I find it much easier just to write my own generator code, then use my time more productively elsewhere.
You could write your own PHP program/script and embed it into WordPress. You can create a plugin wrapper (just take a simple plugin and look at its main header file and the readme.txt file) to create a function and call it inside a page template. Look for WordPress custom page template. The beauty of WordPress lies in its ability to process regular PHP/MySQL scripts without the need of OOP or database abstraction layers.
A page generated from a database is a dynamic page, a static page is one written by hand. How do you create dry water or black paint that's white? That's what you're asking. You want to generate dynamic pages. The fact that the data never changes doesn't make them static pages, it just makes your data static. Generate them the same way you'd generate any dynamic pages - when the user selects the city, create the page using data you select from the database using a WHERE clause for the city. The cost for such a site would depend on the complexity of the initial page - a plain text page would be a lot cheaper than something full of flash and glitz.
i am making an eshop to sell my stuff, i want to make it dynamic so that i can do content management , also i wish to generate frendly static pages for the search engine. how do i mix the two things , is there any software available , will it cost or is it free?
Rukbat, your definitions of dynamic and static are incorrect. HOW you generate the page has NO bearing on WHAT type of a page it is. A page that is generated and uploaded to a website BEFORE anyone looks at it is a static page. A page that is generated ON DEMAND by the viewer is dynamic. Dynamic pages DO NOT exist UNTIL the viewer does something that causes them to be generated. Static pages exist BEFORE the viewer discovers them. Dynamic pages change EVERY TIME someone wants to look at them. Static pages NEVER change until the website owner changes them. How the owner changes them has no bearing on the type of page they are.
If anyone sees this thread. I have the same issue. I have a huge database of lawyers and want to import it into Wordpress. There are a couple of plugins that do this as well Wordpress has an import option. I'm just stuck on how to make sure the info flows properly - you know - line breaks and such. I would pay someone to import the database for me into my wordpress site. PM me.