I need php mysql help please, before I start having seizures!

are you able to connect to database properly.??run query and store it in a variable like
$result=mysql_query("select content
from (your table name)
where url="the url user entered");


and display $result..

Ok... here is how we do it:

Our .htaccess is setup to have index.php respond to any missing pages. Since you are using error.php, simply replace the ./index.php with ./error.php. (I only mention this because some people would redirect to the error.php page and this would be a problem...)

Then our index.php page gets the name of the file the visitor was trying to visit, and saves it to a variable called $page

$page = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];

Then we do our SQL and get the page content

// database connection is not here. please be sure you are connected.
// also, our connection is called $conn --- it looks like this:
// $conn=mysql_connect ($dbserver,$dbuser,$dbpassword) or die ("I cannot connect to the <b>$dbname</b> database at <b>$dbserver</b> " . mysql_error());

// this is the sql & database retrieval

$sql = "select content from yourtable where lower(url) = '" . $page . "'";
$result = mysql_query($sql, $conn) or die ("<br><strong>Error retrieving content - $sql</strong>");

// this is where we grab the database details. this will make is so the 'content' field in your database is available to you as $content in php

if ( mysql_num_rows($result) != 0 ) {
extract (mysql_fetch_array($result));

// display the content
echo $content;
} else {
echo "the page is not found, and it's not in the database";
}


Finally, please note that the $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] command will return a leading / ... i.e. in your example the url you want to search for in the database would be /this-is-a-page.php

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the replies, everyone

@bluebotbrother I am able to connect to the database and display all the info from all the fields. Been working on it some more since I posted originally.

@Charles Thanks for the thorough info and your code is exactly what I was looking for. I've been reading up on the $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] command and it's the crucial part that I was missing.

Also, this little project has turned into something a little bigger - a simple little CMS. Why not, right? It's only a matter of adding an admin form for entering content into the database which is pretty easy.

Anyway, I want to get the url redirects to work properly first and the help I've gotten here will definitely get me up and running.

Thanks again!

Paul

P.S. I'll update this thread once I get the code rewritten and let everyone know how it's coming along.