website database help wanted

sandhu40

Hi, I am currently having a website built and have been sent a final draft of it and after nearly 6 weeks of me tweaking it it finally looks acceptable. The company designing the site are web creation uk . com. They have designed some very good sites and I am happy with mine. It's not live yet but I have the link for it. The CMS system is being designed now so I can edit the text on my site anytime I wish.

My problem is I think the designer is struggling with a certain aspect of the site. Let me explain. I am a gas engineer and will be doing gas safety certificates for landlords. What I want to be able to do is come home and scan them onto the computer and upload them onto the site. Then create a username and password for the customer and email them the details. They then log on and can access thier certificates anytime. I can do the same. This is merely for effect as I know I could email them but it looks more professional and I dont have to pay extra. The certificates need to be searchable by postcode and I will probably need to hold around 2000 at a time.

My question is this: are there any ready made databases (is that the correct term) that can be implemented onto my site and used for free?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

sharkie

I think you would be better off scanning them in and emailing them off, rather than having a database just for the fact of (a) storage (b) confidentiality (c) backups (d) bandwith (e) maintenance of the thing and support should the database go wrong )(f) security - and they are the firs ones that roll of the top of my head

KISS - keep it simply stupid - and you can't go wrong!

jweb2k

Create database in phpMyAdmin, set all the fields up, keep the certificate images in a folder called uploads and set the field for certificate_image to pick from that folder. Should be quite simple for your designer to do after a CMS

fuzzball172

Don't forget that when you hold personal data that identifies an individual you have to take into consideration the Data Protection Act. You must ensure that the data is only held for a specific reason and time and more importantly securely. Is it the 'gadgetness' of the database that is the appeal or does the database actually serve a real purpose?

Lee