Software for the site...

[Mopar1973Man]

Well gang...

winter is coming to Idaho soon. I've got a crazy idea for a software I want to build for the site. I've been hunting all over the internet for something even close but never found it yet.

Ok... I need to explain myself. Currently I'm using a program called Automotive Wolf to track my maintenance on my vehicle. But then I thought like yeah with today's economy nobody can just throw money at software for a purpose like this. But I started studing MySQL and PHP for the past few nights and getting a rough road map of design made up.

I'm looking to build a stand-alone program for now that will track your vehicle(s) maintence records. But I'm wanting to have a average calculator that can try to predict when next oil change is going to be and send you a email notifing the owner of that maintenance.

Being I've never really created a PHP program it going to very rough and crude at first but I'm going to give it my best shot. The first few small program I produced is the ratio calculator (Liters/metric) here.

<?php   $gal = $_POST["liter"];  $rat = $_POST["ratio0"];  $ozfuel = (1000 * $gal);  $mix = ($ozfuel / $rat); ?>

So now to move beyond the simple few lines of code to a wider idea to try and help my group of vehicle owners...

I'm open to ideas and suggestions...

--- Update to the previous post...

Like last night I did the studying and reading up for how to layout the database to hold the information on the server. Now I'm working out what information I need to capture from the members or users... But the more I think about it I'm might barrow or share information from vBulletin (forum) so registered members can just click and enjoy.

Like on the template layout I'm going to most likely use defined constants for the text layout of the screen.

I need to contact vBulletin and find out if there is any special login requirements so I can access the database.

Oh the ideas and dreams running through my head right now... I've got all winter to get something slamed together...

[Rogan]

having some php and a bit of MySQL DB history, I can try to help you if you'd like. Im more familiar with SyBase and Oracle DB space, but I do deal with ColdFusion, PHP and the likes..

[Mopar1973Man]

Cool. I'm still very greeen to the PHP programming and learning as we speak... I've been reading "PHP & MySQL for Dummies" to bone up. It simular to older BASIC programming back in the day... But then add the MySQL server tosses a monkey wrench in things... So I've been playing with smaller programs to get boned up and then start playing with the idea of a maintenance database of the members...

[Mopar1973Man]

I'm getting my notes and ideas hammered out on what I want to store for data... Ultimately I want to be hooked to vBulletin database for the user data but for my first program I'm going to build my own solo database for now. (Safer for the Forum ) But here is the information I want to capture... [ATTACH]1825[/ATTACH]

Mopar1973Man Vehicle Maintenance.doc

[Rogan]

Michael, within your table structure, you've got subtables (using maint. int. table as an example), that have (from what I understand) variables.. Ex:

MAINTENANCE INTERVAL[INDENT]AIR FILTER[INDENT]InspectionReplace[/INDENT][/INDENT]

Are these essentially "Yes/No" or "either/Or" selections? Are these to be a drop-down option for the fields in which you want to populate user data? Are you not allowing NULL values?

[Mopar1973Man]

Michael, within your table structure, you've got subtables (using maint. int. table as an example), that have (from what I understand) variables.. Ex:

MAINTENANCE INTERVAL[INDENT]AIR FILTER[INDENT]InspectionReplace[/INDENT][/INDENT]

Are these essentially "Yes/No" or "either/Or" selections? Are these to be a drop-down option for the fields in which you want to populate user data? Are you not allowing NULL values?

At this point they should be filled with non-null value of the next service of each.