Web app help

[austin]

I produce college ID cards, this time I want students to fill the form online so my job will just be to print… … I need help on how to go about this. Each student should be able to enter their data and preview as it looks… . Now I use a Hiti card printer. Help pls

[SamA74]

It is quite an involved process, too much to answer in one post. Briefly, the steps you will need are:

• Create a html form.

• Create a processing script for the form.

• Set up some means to store the data.

• Set up a script to retrieve the data and format it into the card.

You may need to ask more specific questions on these steps. Not knowing your level of knowledge in the various languages that could be involved, it is hard to give the exact advice you need.
Do you know: HTML, PHP, Javascript, SQL (or other database)?

[austin]

@SamA74 thanks for the reply. I sincerely appreciate your concern. Am just a newbie and will require an assistance to achieve this flawlessly while leaving from it. I will be glad to have you behind me.

[SamA74]

If you are new to web development, completing the steps above may be a daunting task. Making a html form is not so difficult. Creating the processing script is a little harder, but a simple one can be done with basic php knowledge. But when you need to make it secure against spammers and hackers, then it can get complex and require more in-depth knowledge.
So you may want to try a pre-made processing script to save you all that work. One that I have used in the past is FormMail from Tectite. It is based on a php processor with built in security, so the hard stuff has been done for you. You just need to make the html form (there are templates included) and make a couple of edits to the script. But you don’t need any real knowledge of php to do that, there is not much you need to change and it is all explained and has links to on-line help pages.
The way it stores data is in a CSV file, rather than a database like SQL, so that’s one other less thing to have to learn. The CSV can be loaded into a database or programs like XL if that is any use to you in getting the final output.