How this site was made

This site was made using Microsoft Access 97. Basic sections for the site were decided on and then a database was constructed to hold the data. Finally some Forms Queries and modules of VBA code were written to create files for the site that you are now seeing.

The Access Database contains these main tables

TOPICS
ARTICLES
HYPERLINKS
PAGEFILENAME

The links that you see on the left hand side of this page were generated with the information contained in the TOPICS table. This table also contained information that was specific to each topic such as the italic text at the top of each of the pages that gives a brief description of that topic. Each topic is linked into the PAGEFILENAME table. The purpose of the PAGEFILENAME table is so that you can choose what filename you want the file to have. This link is only for the main index pages for each topic. The ARTICLES table is linked into the TOPICS table so that the articles can be grouped by subject. The ARTICLES Table is also linked into the PAGEFILENAME table because it also needs to have filenames for each of the articles.

Finally the HYPERLINKS table contains links to other websites on each topic. These are included on the index page for each subject and so it doesn't need to be linked to the PAGEFILENAME table.

The way the database is designed allows new topics to be added quite easily, although I guess that once there are to many topics it may become a problem.

As you can see the site isn't finished yet so you should check back in a while when I've got more stuff up.