Hello,

I will appoligise up front if this is a dumb question. But, I am learning PHP as I create my website, so I am not learning it in any type of structured order.


I want to display links on my website according to popularity. (Top ten)
but, I am not sure how to accomplish this, and what is the best way to do this.

1) Sort and store the results in a seperate database.
2) Have it sort dynamically as the page is loaded.
3) Is there a way to do this with out another database?
4) How to set this up to update on a weekly basis?

Thanks,
Richard

If your database is set to store both a url and rating for each link, you could use a statement like the one below.

SELECT url, rating FROM mytable ORDER BY rating DESCENDING;

Note, however, that you still have to up the rating in order for this to work. That could always be done by the link being something like...
<a href="up_rate.php?url=$url">$url</a>
and on up_rate.php, run a query that increases the rating...
SELECT rating FROM mytable WHERE url = '$url';
(increase rating by 1)
UPDATE TABLE mytable SET rating = '$newrating';
and then redirect to $url.


There very well may be a simpler way to do this, but above is how I know to do it.

I remember a post submitted by Allowee quite a while ago that you may find interesting: http://www.gidforums.com/t-1194.html. At least it will point you in a direction to get the link markups done.

For you to sort a set of results, you need to maintain a column of data in your database table on which you will apply the sort.

It's really quite uncomplicated but I think I can help you better if you describe the table and post some sample data in your reply.

__________________
J de Silva
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