Thank you guys for all the support i have been recieving since i started putting up this blog, i have tried to make sure that i cover those little problems that might appear to be simple but at the same time poses a big problen for the everyday internet user and designer.
Remembear we covered the issue of installing a php script and setting up your site. Now there is a major problem that comes with editing the files associated with these scripts. Because of the fact that there are so many files associated with these scripts to edit, the best thing to do is to take it gradually.
Let us start by answering some common questions:
How do i identify a file that needs editing?
Normally , you do not go about editing a file that does not need editing, while browsing through pages, the page that needs editing would usually have it's page extension on the browser like home.html, home.asp, home.php, all you need to do is go to the server and look for this particular file, sometimes it could be a file that is inside a folder like admin/includes/home.php.
Please look for the files according to the folder where they belong and sometimes you might find that some of the files had been integrated into the other, in this case you would have to read through the whole lines find the actual file to edit, now one of my best tricks is to use the source code view on your browser, this would normally present the whole files as one and then you would know where to find what you need. A good script would normally leave comments to aid the editing.
How do i know which code to edit ?
This is a little bit tough, in this case you must be atleast half or basically knowledgeable in the language used on the page you want to edit, i would advice you to back up the files you want to edit and then if there is any mistake, you can quickly replace the file to the status quo.
If you read through the codes very well, you should be able to know which lines you need to edit. lets say you want to change an image in a page from "Mike.jpg" to "Mike.gif", all you need to do is look around the codes in the page where you feel the image is, then change it accordingly. The same goes for the html or php codes, usually you see a similarity between what you are looking for and the codes in the page.
The best advice is to look for an expert in this field.
What is the relevance of the header and footer php files ?
Most php scripts like forum scripts, cms scripts etc would normally have a file header.php, header.tpl , footer.php,footer.tpl. This provides users the ease to add and remove contents to the head and foot of the sites. As usuaul it is better to always backup the files before they edited.
These two files are very important because in a site, most people would like to change the looks of the head and the foot site regularly and this can be done through these two files.
What about the CSS files?
Coming soon!
