I am new to Dreamweaver and have created a site, but now need to create a login to get to the dealer section of the site. Once there I also need to create an order form.
I am quite new to all of this and don’t have a clue how to do this in Dreamweaver. I’ve been searching and keep coming up with info that is talking about PHP and such. I have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. If this is what I need to use, can someone direct me to somewhere that would give me step by step info relating to these issues? Or is there a better…easier way?
Yes, you can only do so much with HTML and CSS. They get you as far as a styled page displayed on your screen. But for anything to happen on the screen—like a form that sends an email, or login functionality—you need something more sophisticated than HTML and CSS. You need a programming language that operates behind the scenes, on the server itself. The most common language for that sort of thing is PHP. It takes a bit of learning, though.
Sometimes your web hosting service will have some kind of control panel that will allow you to set up a simple login facility, but more commonly, you would install some kind of content management system (CMS) to handle things like that. A CMS is a bunch of code (often written in PHP) that is predesigned to allow you to use things like logins and forms without you having to code them yourself. (Nice CMS examples include MODx and ExpressionEngine.)
An alternative to building your own contact form would be to use something like Wufoo.
had you been using wordpress you could find contact form plugins wherein visitors can just stuff in their details and contact you for their queries. These plugins are very easy to use. All you need to do is install the plugin and place it at right place in the page. However if you are looking for a custom design website, i guess you should be using PHP as mentioned by ralph.
You would need to create a registration page that fills stuff in into a database table (Usually MySQL).
During submittal you check if the username exists, if it does bring up an error and tell them to choose a different username.
At log in, The user submits a username and password that goes with it.
The PHP selects the username from a table in a database where the submitted username and password match (The passwords are usually and preferably md5’d).
A session is started with the username that was matched from MySQL.
Protected pages would check if the session is started and if it is, the member stuff would then be views.