| phpWebSite
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Introduction
When I first found phpWebSite I was expecting to find a small set of scripts designed to add and modify content with a few silly little gimmicky features. When I downloaded the .zip file of 600Kb I started to wonder exactly what the script did do. After unzipping the files I made some slight configuration changes and uploaded and was very surprised at what the script had to offer. Installation
I’m an experienced Perl programmer and have quite a bit of PHP installation experience but from the start the script was very easy to install. All installation consists of is setting up a mySQL database, easy to do if you know how, otherwise your host can do it. I then changed a couple of variables and was away. The only time consuming part was the uploading of the 1.2Mb of PHP files. All the rest of the installation is done via the web browser and takes less than a minute. Language Support
The range of language add-on packs available for phpWebSite was quite stunning. Everything from Norwegian to Indonesian and Dutch to Thai. So chances are they’ll have the right one for you. Changing language packs is very easy to. Just a bit of uploading of files. Configuration and Customisation
The standard configuration of phpWebSite allows for a lot of customisation. All the features are optional and if you do want them, very customisable in lots of ways. Layout wise the script is also very customisable though not as easily as for a normal web page. Their are various ‘theme packs’ available which give you a different layout and design for your web site. Customisation to suit your web site design is reasonably easy, simply editing a few text based files. Features
phpWebSite offers an incredible range of features. Their really are too many to list so I’m just going to write about the more impressive and surprising ones. Links Directory
Built into phpWebSite is a powerful links database directory. It simply allows for categories adding and sorting of web links to create a site a lot like Yahoo. I was very surprised when I found this because I’d heard no real mention on the site about it being quite so impressively powerful. Statistics
Built in to the administration suite is a lovely little statistics analysis program. It’s a very simple yet powerful tool which gives you statistics for your web site. Everything from operating systems used to browser and referrer. Survey
The script comes with a built in survey and voting scripts. The script alone could be distributed but integrated into phpWebSite gives it a lot of extra power. It offers all the features you’d get from a normal survey script such as poll archiving and statistical results of the poll and all in all is a very powerful little addition. The Calendar
The calendar is a powerful little script built in to phpWebSite which simply offers a news scripts with a new twist. It gives visitors the ability to view news and upcoming events with a calendar type view. All events and news additions can be categorised and you can add pre-set locations to save event addition time. Search Facility
The script also offers a powerful search facility to search all the content. It returns detailed listings of related content, events and news articles all categorised which is extremely useful and a very powerful tool to have. Visitor Registration
The script includes a registration facility for visitors, this allows them to register and then login to the site to give them extra facilities on the site though at present this feature has little use in my opinion. Administration
The script comes with a very powerful administration panel. It offers a wide variety of features which will sadly take too long to list them all. The main are the ability to edit the side menus, main page content and web page content features. The script basically gives you a quick way of adding pages to your site. Everything is done from the browser and you can even have a choice of six different layout designs. Main page content can be edited and all pages you create can also be easily modified. Their is also a menu maintenance feature which allows you to order, add, modify and remove items from the select menu. You can also maintain polls, calendar events, web links and users. The admin. panel also offers statistical analysis of the site traffic. Conclusion
I would have to say phpWebSite is one of the most impressively coded and produced scripts that I’ve ever used. It’s all very intricately designed and worked absolutely perfectly and I am probably a fool to believe their are no bugs but I don’t think I found any. I don’t like to rate resource ten out of ten because I always believe there’s room for improvement with everything but phpWebSite is incredible. Whilst it could be improved, I don’t see any reason too as it’s so incredible already. The only problem I have with it for my personal use is the whole integration of PHP and CGI scripts is always a problem which is the only reason I haven’t switched all my sites over to it.
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| Homepage | http://phpwebsite.appstate.edu/ |
| CGI-Index.com Listing | http://www.CGI-Index.com/Detail/277.html |
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| Version Reviewed | 0.7.6 |
| Software Cost | Free |
| Software Author | Appalachian State University |
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| Review Rating (by visitors) | 
Rating: 0 Votes: 0 |
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| Review Author | Neil Skirrow |
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| All reviews listed on CGI-Index.com are written by individuals who are not associated with the script developer, they are an independent view of the software from one individual's point of view. If you disagree, please submit your own review. |
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