Assigment 7--displaying data from a DB table is finished

It is with some relief that I note I am basically finished with the task of making my web page display data from a DB table. This assignment did not seem too difficult, but took me a surprisingly long time to finish (maybe > 8 hours).  The task was create a database table, then display the table's data in my php web page. I ran into several difficulties with this task. One of the difficulties was making the table borders visible. It seems I was able to make them visible on one of my pages but not the other. It required more than I might have thought necessary to make them visible--setting visibility at the individual cells, using css (not html), rather than setting the visibility at the table tag. I'm not sure why I was not able to set border visibility at the table tag, nor why my table border still wouldn't show up in one of the tables, but it might have something to do with the css styles used to construct the page. Another difficulty was using an external .sql file to update the database. I learned that the .rtf format contains additional formatting information which probably is incompatible with mysql. I also learned how to save a text edit file as a .txt file in order to make it mysql compatible. After renaming the .txt extension .sql, I was able to successfully execute sql commands contained in the external file.

I may later try to figure out how to make the table borders visible on the 'nivo' webpage, but the assignment is basically finished.

Assignment 6--Adminer--is finished

I am glad to be finished with this assignment. I did not keep track of how long it took me to complete this assignment. I installed Adminer then deleted it to avoid offending 000webhost. I did run a few mysql commands on the provided sql interface (phpmyadmin), so I think that I have some understanding of how to use a web-based interface with mysql.

Assignment 5--htaccess--is done!

I am finished with assignment 5. In reality, this assignment was not that difficult, but it was a bit boring. Still, I do see the usefulness of htaccess in controlling access to a website, redirecting, etc.

I probably could have stumbled for a lot longer had I NOT remembered Bill's trick of using a broken php file to discover the physical address of the root of my web space. Stumbling around and wasting hours when I don't know what to do is something that I really don't want, but that seems quite possible when working with computers. Fortunately, in this case, paying attention to one detail in the lesson may have saved me a lot of time.

Also, for some reason the file not found page did not display with IE but did display with mozilla. It seems nice to be able to control that aspect of the site, rather than being redirected to 000webhosts file not found page.

Did not track how long things took but probably around 4 hours today plus however long it took yesterday. Glad to be done.