[Hosemeyer]

As my first ever php script, I've decided to make a news script to addon to the millions of others. I'd like to make an Installation script so that anyone who downloads it, can just open up the installation script into the browser and enter their db info and username & passwords, and it would right it to the settings.php, But I also need it to install the sql I have to properly set up the database to work. I'm quite the newbie, so If you guys can help me it would be great. (this is for a free script)

[Hosemeyer]

Also, If you guys can point me into the direction of how to set up a template system so that all the person has to do is take their regular html template, and put in the variables for news and other features. ie: $news$ or something and it would put it out.

[blaw]

Hi there,

Originally Posted by Hosemeyer

But I also need it to install the sql I have to properly set up the database to work. I'm quite the newbie, so If you guys can help me it would be great. (this is for a free script)

I guess you are almost answering your own question, but include with your distribution an SQL file that defines your tables, etc. Run it during the installation (after you ask DB info like user, pass, etc, of course). Some software ask the users to run this SQL prior to installation, but I guess that's not what you want.

As for the template scheme, one thing you might want to check is Smarty. This template engine is (semi-?) official PHP template engine and is very powerful. You can check it at http://smarty.php.net/ .

Again, like you almost answered your question, but basically you have something like {OUTPUT1}, {OUTPUT2}, etc, in the HTML template. Load the template when the page is loaded, get the file contents in a string, str_replace all the {}'s with corresponding output. There may be different ways to achieve this, but I know this is one common way.

Hope this helps. Cheers,