This is part of an IRC transcript between a buddy and I, wherein I try to explain a little bit about how the internet works and why knowing at least a little bit of database theory will go a long way in demystifying learning how to build stuff. (It’s a technical term.) He’s trying to learn a bit about Drupal and about how you build sites with it, so I’m going to tag him in on a project for a friend of mine who runs a yoga studio. Hers was the first site I ever built, in Wordpress. I’ve been thinking about porting it to Drupal and having some more fun with it, as she’d kinda like a database of her registered students among a few other niceties that would be fairly easy to pull off in Drupal.
grubb: And it basically works fine, but I wanted to have a bit more fun with it and integrate the calendar into the site
[4:21pm] grubb: but it’s pretty much a prefect easy Drupal site.
[4:21pm] grubb: When I say “there’d be a couple of different content types
[4:21pm] grubb: ”
[4:21pm] Keith__: ok
[4:21pm] grubb: does that mean anything to you?
[4:24pm] grubb: So I’ll just go ahead and explain it
[4:24pm] Keith__: ok, sorry multitasking
[4:24pm] grubb: Pretty much everything you interact with on the internet is an interface to a database somewhere.
[4:25pm] grubb: no sweat.
[4:25pm] grubb: I assume you’re familiar with super-basic database theory
[4:26pm] grubb: basically a database is a bunch of data, and that data is ordered in a very structured way so that it’s easy to tell a computer how to go get the specific data you’re looking for
[4:26pm] grubb: Example - http://ignoredbydinosaurs.com/
[4:27pm] grubb: if you scroll to the bottom, the blog - that’s one content type on my site, which means more or less that each one of those posts is located in one row of the “blog” table in the database.
[4:27pm] grubb: I’m the only user on that site, but if there were more we’d each occupy one row in the “user” table in the database.
[4:28pm] grubb: My portfolio is another content type - each portfolio entry is one row in the “portfolio” table in the database.
[4:28pm] grubb: (This is a simplified explanation, but basically accurate)
[4:28pm] grubb: If you go to Facebook, each user is a row in the “user” table in the FB database.
[4:29pm] grubb: Each post on everybody’s wall is a row in the “wall_posts” table in their database.
[4:29pm] grubb: The “wall_posts” table in the database would have a column for the “post” and for the “user” who posted it.
[4:30pm] Keith__: ok
[4:30pm] grubb: So if I post something on my Facebook wall, that particular row would have “blah, blah blah” (whatever the post is) and my user_id
[4:31pm] grubb: So by linking that table with the post on it with the table that contains my profile info (including my user_id), you can put all of that info onto my post on someone else’s wall.
[4:31pm] Keith__: ok
[4:31pm] Keith__: based on user id
[4:31pm] grubb: and that post would have all the meaningful shit that you want to see on FB
[4:31pm] grubb: right
[4:31pm] Keith__: ok
[4:31pm] grubb: so the user_id is important
[4:32pm] Keith__: what browser do you work in?
[4:32pm] grubb: it appears not just in the user table, but also in the posts table so you can link the two together
[4:32pm] grubb: I use Chrome
[4:32pm] grubb: is this making sense?
[4:32pm] Keith__: somewhat
[4:32pm] grubb: the point is obviously that whenever you go to a web page, you’re looking at HTML
[4:32pm] grubb: (scuse me, it’s not that obvious)
[4:33pm] Keith__: ok
[4:33pm] grubb: But there’s not a mountain of programmers writing each page of HTML that anyone could possibly look at
[4:33pm] grubb: on the entire internet
[4:33pm] Keith__: right
[4:34pm] grubb: When you go to your Facebook homepage, a computer on the other end of that is putting that particular page of HTML together “dynamically”
[4:34pm] grubb: it says “okay, database, give me the 50 most recent posts from all of Keith Hick’s friends. put the most recent one at the top”
[4:35pm] grubb: and that is fundamentally what a database does
[4:35pm] Keith__: ok
[4:35pm] grubb: and so it hands that information back to the computer which then puts that specific page together for you
[4:35pm] Keith__: right
[4:35pm] grubb: If you go to the front page of my website it does the same thing
[4:36pm] Keith__: complex filing system deciphered?
[4:36pm] grubb: you mean this/path/or/wahtever?
[4:36pm] grubb: to get that particular page?
[4:36pm] Keith__: huh
[4:36pm] Keith__: yeah
[4:36pm] grubb: what do you mean?
[4:36pm] Keith__: never mind
[4:37pm] grubb: OK
[4:37pm] Keith__: let’s plan on rebuilding this site
[4:37pm] grubb: OK
grubb: so basically, start looking at most webpages as a thing that has been lovingly crafted for you by a computer at that specific point in time, because that’s what a lot of them are