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  • December 15, 2021 at 7:47 pm #3937722

    Need a suggestion or suggestions from experienced website developers.

    by ccorinthos · about 3 years, 1 month ago

    Hello All,
    I am hoping to get some suggestions from those of you a lot more experienced in website design/development.

    The organization I consult for uses a PDF to list all of their services and fees. They distribute this document to all potential clients and customers. I am trying to “connect” (for lack of a better word) the website to that document. So when a visitor to the website wants to know the cost of a widget, they can bring that specific cost up without having to go through the entire PDF. The fees change, so I am hoping to somehow make a connection where the changes can be made in one place and “pushed” out to the website.

    Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

    Thanks!

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    • December 15, 2021 at 8:24 pm #3940334
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      You may be tilting at windmills.

      by rproffitt · about 3 years, 1 month ago

      In reply to Need a suggestion or suggestions from experienced website developers.

      The debate here could be that the prices belong in a database and the PDFs are reports from said database.

      But hey, you may want to do this the hard way so let’s read PDFs first.
      https://www.google.com/search?q=pdf+reader+php+site:stackoverflow.com seems to cover that but I have to guess your web site is in the usual PHP.

      Now that you can read the PHP your best move is to put that information into the usual SQL database then create your web pages normally.

    • December 15, 2021 at 10:38 pm #3940332
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      Re: pdf

      by kees_b · about 3 years, 1 month ago

      In reply to Need a suggestion or suggestions from experienced website developers.

      Pdf’s are meant to be read by people. not to be read by a program or machine. The acronym pdf is short for Portable Document Format, so primarily it’s a document.

      You didn’t tell how that pdf was made. Let me guess somebody in your company maintains a Word document with all services and prices, or maybe spreadsheet, and “prints” that to make the pdf. Or maybe he uses Acrobat.
      Those aren’t a good source for a website either.

      The best, if not only, solution – as already mentioned by Proffitt, is to maintain the data in a database and use that as a common source for both a printable version (a pdf, a brochure) and a website.

      No experienced website designer/developer would suggest otherwise.

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