DISPLAY DIVIDED CONTENT FROM EXTERNAL HTML USING SERVER-SIDE SCRIPTING

In the initial build of my site, I used a handful of HTML product pages containing many products. Each page was “Manually-written” as a category, and each Category lists the products with all the attributes for description, pricing, Add to Cart button, etc.

There are roughly 3-dozen sub-directories for product images on my supplier’s server with over 60,000 possible choices. This was mentioned because I already tried many image gallery programs, but none of them have the capability of referencing unique URL’s based on the item number range; ie, when the item number range changes, so does the referenced directory; and to show that any CMS systems offered by my host would be problematic using current methods of image capture.

I figured that since I have full image download rights to my supplier’s server, it was better to simply call pre-existing images from it than to download thousands of images to the server I use for the site. This method was adopted as it was a simpler solution to MYSQL,

I don’t intend to run a Data-base driven site as I don’t know how to set it up. In my attempts in doing so, it was discovered that similar methods for image capture could not be used for related content, everything had to be either input manually or import a file from local drive;

THE OBJECTIVE:
Keeping in mind that all content is referenced from whatever category page is loaded and manually-written, what I would like to accomplish is;
  • Avoid I-frames as much as possible;
  • Content is to be loaded into Named Divs;
  • User is viewing the Catalog page and selects “All Products” for example
  • The TOC page loads showing all categories as text links. For the sake of argument, categories are Able, Baker, Charlie, Delta… Zulu
  • Category “Able” is chosen showing the image gallery for all Able Products (Default image is GIF 150x150)
  • An image is selected; loading the content for that image; say “Able-1”.
  • Along with the images content are links for Previous, Next, Gallery and List;
  • User selects List to view all products showing details for each.
  • It would be preferred to have the TOC to one side (sidebar div for example) at all times for whatever category page is loaded.
  • All images on each category page (except the Gallery) will use an image rollover script for showing a larger view of the image onmouseover.


I found lots of great stuff here in the past but none of it was specific enough for what I am trying to accomplish. About the only thing that comes close are some SSI, PHP and AJAX scripts; but they only make reference to whole-page content or downloaded images. Since I have server-side functionality, it is preferred that anything iframe-based is avoided.


I am not a programmer anymore (I haven’t crunched code in over 30-years); but for what I am trying to accomplish, programming skills are required and hence my dilemma. Lacking even the fundamentals anymore, and complicated with limited vision, I come to you all for help.

Just toss me a bone with some meat on it and I’ll gnaw at it for a while…Thanks