[CJstudent]

Hello everyone,

Does anyone know how to create a web site data base? It doesn't have to be complicated. I just wanted to create a data base for my field of study: basically including web sites that would be useful for different areas of research. If anyone has any ideas as to how I can create one, I would greatly appreciated it.

[Scleros]

Further info is needed and "not complicated" qualified. The scope of your desire could range from simply using the favorites or bookmarks features of your browser, to having a local Microsoft Access database of websites with search capability, to having a globally accessible web site supported by a back end MySQL database that scours the web and catagorizes all the research sites of interest it finds.

How many sites are we talking?

[vingogly]

It depends (to paraphrase ex-prez Clinton) on what you mean by "database".

If you mean, "how do I create a simple list of categories and links to sites and put them up on a set of web pages", then you'll need a website design tool that lets you create lists & tables & pages and link them together. I can make some recommendations if that's the case.

If on the other hand you mean, "how do I create a website that's searchable by various criteria", then there are two possible approaches:

1) The records for individual entries go on separate pages and you provide a search capability that will return matching pages. Here's a solution written in PHP. You'll need to know HTML and some PHP to do this.

2) The records for individual entries go into a database and you generate the pages on the fly (dynamic pages). You'll need to know PHP and MySQL to do this; a more programming intensive solution than 1). Here's a book I recommend for learning PHP and MySQL.

[CJstudent]

Hello Vingogly,
Thank you very much for responding to my question. Actually I don't think I need anything all that technical, LOL I am not a technical person when it comes to computer stuff. However, what I want to do is create a "database" that will be used strictly for research. In that database I wanted to include links that will be useful for all areas of my major which is Criminal Justice. So I was thinking of used Excel, I could possibly create this " research data base". It will be a list of 25 or more web sites that will be useful for researching different topics in Criminal Justice. For instance, I would have a column for Forensics, and underneath that I will have a list of web sites, books or similar materials that will be useful,along with a brief summary of the websites, then so on and so forth. Hopefully this makes sense to you and anyone else that reads my posts.

[vingogly]

Ah, that's a different matter then! The Excel solution would work... but you might want to look at these solutions:

Evernote - Collect & organize a wide variety of information (Windows or Mac)
ZuluPad - Personal wiki, free form hypertext system (Mac equivalent: VoodooPad)
WinJournal - Journaling software (Mac equivalent: MacJournal)

All allow you to collect a variety of information types, including URLs. Which is best for you depends on your style of working, basically. I think they all have try before you buy options (I personally use VoodooPad and MacJournal, Evernote is a bit of overkill for me).

Vasily