I would go out tonight, but I haven't got a stitch to wear

[venta]

Hello! I'm back from holiday. It was lovely; more on it later.

For now, though, I have a boring technical enquiry about webpages...

My rapper team used to arrange its bookings by mailing round a Word document with a table in, and getting people to fill it in, and send it back. I thought this was silly, and that what we needed was some sort of centralised document that everyone can go and fill in or look at.

So, I made a pseudo-public (ie "visible if you have the link") spreadsheet using Google Docs, and embedded it in a web page behind a numpty password, and there we were. It all worked beautifully. (Yes, I know this isn't high security. It's just meant to discourage casual twiddling with the bookings sheet, should anyone find it.)

However, several people abruptly stopped being able to see the spreadsheet - it seems that this is a known issue, and I think basically boils down to "you shouldn't embed things with https URLs". Even if it can be made to work, I've been rather put off by the fact it worked, then didn't work, then worked variably for people (independently of browser choice, etc). It doesn't sound like it's a great solution.

Giving people a direct link also isn't working - even though the spreadsheet is publicly visible, they get asked for Google credentials. Which they don't have. I don't want to compel all the rest of my dance team to set up Google accounts.

So! I think I need to bite the bullet and manufacture something myself. It doesn't need to be complicated - basically a grid with people across one axis, events across the other, and an ability to select yes/no/maybe for each intersection. Not complicated, really.

In fact, the only thing stopping me is having absolutely no idea how to go about building a webapp/page that does that. I'm not even very sure what technology I should be looking at to consider beginning to think about using.

Any advice welcome...

For those who don't do geeky questions, but do like either (a) The Smiths or (b) Snoopy, I recommend this.

Comments

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

If it was me I would do it as a form in PHP or similar, with radio buttons or checkboxes as appropriate in each cell, backed by a MySQL or similar database to hold the contents as it accumulates/updates. These technologies are pretty standard on hosting deals these days, so you probably already have them available.

That might seem to be overkill but ime lower-tech solutions are often frustratingly inadequate to some unpredicted requirement.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Well... I've never written any PHP. And I've never so much as looked at a database (not even Access). But my web hosting supports both PHP and MySQL, how wrong can it go...?

(To be answered at some point in the future ;)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

There's heaps of tutorials and reference material out there for exactly this kind of thing, it's a pretty standard batch of techniques. And always good to learn on a practical project rather than just a exercise :-)