Help understanding a Database Driven Website

[bvarley]

I have a database driven website that was built by someone we hired. I am having a problem with a few things that don't work as we wanted on our site and keep being told that they can't be changed because it is a database driven website. For example, we want to be able to search by location on the site, which you post when you are listing on our site. The search is not picking this up and I'm being told it can't be changed "because it's a database driven website". Any information and advise on how this works would be greatly appreciated.

[mobilebadboy]

The great thing about a database driven site is being able to search stored info in a variety of ways. My guesses would be they didn't set the DB up properly to search how you wanted and are making excuses, or they're too lazy to add the additional search options. I have many DB driven sites and I can search however I want, even if I had to make some changes to the DB.

Without knowing the specifics (DB setup, etc) it's hard to know what the problem is. You say location, I would think address and/or city and/or state. If the DB is setup correctly it would be broken down as:

address | city | state | (optional) zip code

Which would make search options very versatile. You could search by any of the 4.

I have sites that are location based, that's how they're setup. I only offer state or zip code search, but could always add the other 2 easily. The other info is still used, just not searchable.

[bvarley]

Thank you for the information.