Introduction

1. Introduction
2. Plan the company presentation
3. Complete the template page
4. Create the home and products pages
5. View events by day, week, month, and year
6. Add RSS Read and Write features
7. Build the company, contact, and news pages
8. View and browse through search results

By reading this article you will learn how to benefit from MX Spring Pack 2006 to its fullest.  The bundle includes seven Dreamweaver extensions created by InterAKT Online, and all of them will be used in the site you are about to create (according to this tutorial instructions).  Click here for a preview of the site's final look.

The main MX Spring Pack 2006 elements that the web application will contain are:

• A stylish drop-down menu set, with CSS skins applied to it.
• Four types of navigation: by records, by pages (Google-like), category navigation, and A to Z navigation.
• Image galleries displayed in a looped representation.
• Sortable dynamic tables.
• The current month calendar is present on each page, and you can view the daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly schedule at any time, with a single-click.
• Import RSS feeds (latest blog posts or news) in your website.
• Easily find information in your site by typing a keyword and then using the search capability.

Requirements

In order to complete this tutorial, you need to have the following software products installed:

• Dreamweaver
• The MX Spring Pack 2006 bundle  Try | Buy
                            
  The seven products in the bundle are:
  1. MX RSS Reader-Writer  Try | Buy
  2. MX Site Search  Try | Buy
  3. MX Looper  Try | Buy
  4. MX Dynamic Table Sorter  Try | Buy
  5. MX Calendar  Try | Buy
  6. MX CSS Menus  Try | Buy
  7. MX Navigation Pack  Try | Buy
                             
  Note: By purchasing the whole bundle you save at least $115!
                            
• A local or remote web server with scripting language support.
                             
  Note: The instructions in this tutorial are particularly given for the PHP server model, so as a scripting language, PHP 4.3 is recommended.
                             
• A database server - MySQL 4.1.1 or higher is recommended as it supports all functions used in this tutorial.
• Download the .sql database script to use for creating the database.
• Download the provided files from where you can start (or better said, continue) working. Explanatory instructions about what they contain will be given throughout the tutorial.

When you are done with this tutorial, you can compare your result with the completed web application found here.

Prerequisites

Certain prerequisite knowledge is needed as well:

• Familiarity with the Dreamweaver interface and workspace, as well as with the MX Spring Pack 2006 products.
• Understanding of the basic concepts in web application development.
• Basic programming skills in PHP.