Preparing an online database for print publications using ASP pages
Step 1 • Step 2 • Step 3 • Step 4
To get started you will need:
- A database that holds the data you want to display on your web site and in print
- Dynamic web page to display formatted data correctly (this can be ASP, PHP, CFM, or whatever format you are using)
- A second dynamic page that will display the database fields correctly but without style formatting, the XPress Tags will be used to tag the field data with formatting information for QuarkXPress
Step 1: Prepare dynamic page for web display
Using whatever technologies and methods you are comfortable with, create the dynamic page that will present your data in the format you want. Insert any necessary code to show/hide field data as required. You probably already have created this page.
For my examples I will be referencing the credit courses offered by our college. You can see how this data is displayed on our web site by viewing the page used to display the Accounting courses. The data has been formatted for clarification, assigning colors and layout using HTML or CSS. Using conditional statements and loops each record displays correctly.
Step 2: Create 2nd dynamic page without style formatting
Using the page described above, remove all style formatting so that the data will appear on the page in correct layout. Do not use tables to layout data, only use <p> and <br> tags and spaces or to separate field data. The goal here is to show the data similar to a plain text format because that is ultimately what we are creating. Here is what my example looks like in this format.
This page is going to be the "skeleton" for the file that we will import into QuarkXPress. You can leave a blank line between records for ease of reading, but you may want to remove them in the next step.
Go to Step 3: Add XPress Tags to Unformatted Page