There's always been somewhat of a disconnect between designer-types and backend-types. And we're not just talking about hairstyles, eyewear, and the contents of their bookshelves — designers and programmers approach problems in different ways, and their individual plans of attack don't always jibe. Of course, you want your site to be sleek, fast, and bleeding-edge, but are you willing to compromise stability, scalability, and compatibility just so the users can ooh and aah at a few pretty pictures? Web design has always been a balancing act, and the ideologies of each camp often clash.
But Webmonkey's here to say that it doesn't have to be that way. It is possible to create a site that has a lightweight Flash frontend, a dreamy interface, and a scalable, secure, and dynamic backend.
Webmonkey Scott has found the balance between eye-catching design and backend database wizardry. Lucky for us, he's agreed to share this knowledge in a two-day tutorial. He's even put together a hands-on project that shows you how to build an easy-to-update blog using Flash. That's right, a Flash-based blog — it sounds a little loony, but this blog pulls content from a MySQL database and feeds it into the dynamic Flash frontend using a few lines of PHP code.
In day one, Scott talks you through the construction of an open source MySQL database using both the phpMyAdmin tool and mysql on the command line. You'll learn how to add blog entries to the database and then you'll learn how to run queries in PHP. Topics such as basic database organization and the behavior of variables are also covered in this lesson.
Day two shows you how to design and build the blog's Flash frontend. You'll use common Flash ActionScript objects to pull the content from your MySQL database to the different areas of your blog's user interface. You'll also learn some common workarounds to keep all of your content flowing smoothly.
Whether you are designer or a programmer, it's time to roll up those sleeves and get ready to see how the other half lives. Even if those of you who don't feel a particular loyalty to either side of the fence will still discover that there's plenty of hands-on knowledge to be gained.
We're not promising that designers will sell their $500 pencil sharpeners, start marrying UNIX geeks, and honeymooning in Cancun before breeding programmer/designer children, but we will insist that they sit in a room alone together until they can build a useful website that everyone can agree on. Hey, stranger things have happened. Like Carrot Top.
