option would be to create a new database, or perhaps simply add a table in an existing product database that will hold the information that you wish to display.

Let’s take five theoretical widget products and design a table as follows:
+------+-----------------------+
| item | product |
+------+-----------------------+
| 1 | Plastic Widgets |
| 2 | Metal Widgets |
| 3 | Wooden Widgets |
| 4 | Rubber Widgets |
| 5 | Stone Widgets |
+------+-----------------------+

Fresh website content for your visitors can be of real benefit when attempting to generate repeat traffic. Most webmasters, however, just don’t have enough spare time to frequently update or rebuild their pages manually. If your web site hosting company provides free access to PHP and MySQL, this article will show you how to combine those two open source tools and replace a portion of your websites’ static content with frequently changing dynamic content.

Why do you need dynamic content for your website?

Static pages on a website eventually become “stale” and visitor traffic can fall significantly over time. The drop in traffic can be attributed to these primary factors:

1) The reluctance of search engines to include and display your potentially “out of date” pages in their search results,

2) The finite number of other subject related websites that would be willing to link to your information on a specific topic, and

3) Visitors that learn to view your static website with a “been there, done that” attitude.

Creating and maintaining a web site requires a significant investment in time and resources. Loosing repeat visitors diminishes the value of your investment. Without repeat traffic it is virtually impossible for a website to be a continuing success.

How can you add dynamic content without having to purchase expensive software?

One proven (and easy to implement) method of creating dynamic content for your website is by rotating information on key, higher traffic web pages using PHP with a MySQL database. Rotating content can take the form of a series of rotating articles, a rotating group of product listings, or even a simple “thought for the day”. What is important is that your clients and visiting search engines find new and interesting information each time they visit your website.

As an example of dynamic content creation, we will build a system that rotates information about a group of products on the main page of a hypothetical retail sales web site that markets widgets. Our goal is to present information about a different type or model of widget available for purchase whenever a consumer visits the shopping web site.

Step One: Create a content table to hold your widget data.

There are a couple of options for storing the data to be displayed in your dynamic content rotation. The first option would be to create a new database, or perhaps simply add a table in an existing product database that will hold the information that you wish to display.

Let’s take five theoretical widget products and design a table as follows:
+------+-----------------------+
| item | product |
+------+-----------------------+
| 1 | Plastic Widgets |
| 2 | Metal Widgets |
| 3 | Wooden Widgets |
| 4 | Rubber Widgets |
| 5 | Stone Widgets |
+------+-----------------------+ <

all significantly over time. The drop in traffic can be attributed to these primary factors:

1) The reluctance of search engines to include and display your potentially “out of date” pages in their search results,

2) The finite number of other subject related websites that would be willing to link to your information on a specific topic, and

3) Visitors that learn to view your static website with a “been there, done that” attitude.

Creating and maintaining a web site requires a significant investment in time and resources. Loosing repeat visitors diminishes the value of your investment. Without repeat traffic it is virtually impossible for a website to be a continuing success.

How can you add dynamic content without having to purchase expensive software?

One proven (and easy to implement) method of creating dynamic content for your website is by rotating information on key, higher traffic web pages using PHP with a MySQL database. Rotating content can take the form of a series of rotating articles, a rotating group of product listings, or even a simple “thought for the day”. What is important is that your clients and visiting search engines find new and interesting information each time they visit your website.

As an example of dynamic content creation, we will build a system that rotates information about a group of products on the main page of a hypothetical retail sales web site that markets widgets. Our goal is to present information about a different type or model of widget available for purchase whenever a consumer visits the shopping web site.

Step One: Create a content table to hold your widget data.

There are a couple of options for storing the data to be displayed in your dynamic content rotation. The first option would be to create a new database, or perhaps simply add a table in an existing product database that will hold the information that you wish to display.

Let’s take five theoretical widget products and design a table as follows:
+------+-----------------------+
| item | product |
+------+-----------------------+
| 1 | Plastic Widgets |
| 2 | Metal Widgets |
| 3 | Wooden Widgets |
| 4 | Rubber Widgets |
| 5 | Stone Widgets |
+------+-----------------------+

your investment. Without repeat traffic it is virtually impossible for a website to be a continuing success.

How can you add dynamic content without having to purchase expensive software?

One proven (and easy to implement) method of creating dynamic content for your website is by rotating information on key, higher traffic web pages using PHP with a MySQL database. Rotating content can take the form of a series of rotating articles, a rotating group of product listings, or even a simple “thought for the day”. What is important is that your clients and visiting search engines find new and interesting information each time they visit your website.

As an example of dynamic content creation, we will build a system that rotates information about a group of products on the main page of a hypothetical retail sales web site that markets widgets. Our goal is to present information about a different type or model of widget available for purchase whenever a consumer visits the shopping web site.

Step One: Create a content table to hold your widget data.

There are a couple of options for storing the data to be displayed in your dynamic content rotation. The first option would be to create a new database, or perhaps simply add a table in an existing product database that will hold the information that you wish to display.

Let’s take five theoretical widget products and design a table as follows:
+------+-----------------------+
| item | product |
+------+-----------------------+
| 1 | Plastic Widgets |
| 2 | Metal Widgets |
| 3 | Wooden Widgets |
| 4 | Rubber Widgets |
| 5 | Stone Widgets |
+------+-----------------------+

new and interesting information each time they visit your website.

As an example of dynamic content creation, we will build a system that rotates information about a group of products on the main page of a hypothetical retail sales web site that markets widgets. Our goal is to present information about a different type or model of widget available for purchase whenever a consumer visits the shopping web site.

Step One: Create a content table to hold your widget data.

There are a couple of options for storing the data to be displayed in your dynamic content rotation. The first option would be to create a new database, or perhaps simply add a table in an existing product database that will hold the information that you wish to display.

Let’s take five theoretical widget products and design a table as follows:
+------+-----------------------+
| item | product |
+------+-----------------------+
| 1 | Plastic Widgets |
| 2 | Metal Widgets |
| 3 | Wooden Widgets |
| 4 | Rubber Widgets |
| 5 | Stone Widgets |
+------+-----------------------+

option would be to create a new database, or perhaps simply add a table in an existing product database that will hold the information that you wish to display.

Let’s take five theoretical widget products and design a table as follows:
+------+-----------------------+
| item | product |
+------+-----------------------+
| 1 | Plastic Widgets |
| 2 | Metal Widgets |
| 3 | Wooden Widgets |
| 4 | Rubber Widgets |
| 5 | Stone Widgets |
+------+-----------------------+

1-a) Create your table with the following SQL statement:

CREATE TABLE `content_table` ( `item` int(4) NOT NULL auto_increment, `product` varchar(10) NOT NULL default '', KEY `item` (`item`) ) TYPE=MyISAM AUTO_INCREMENT=6 ;

This table contains two fields. The first is an item number and the second is a description field that will hold the product name and features. Note: You can add fields to your actual table including: an image URL field, shopping cart direct purchase URL field, product page field, etc.

1-b) Insert the example data into your new table as follows:

INSERT INTO `content_table ` VALUES (1, ' Plastic Widgets');
INSERT INTO `content_table ` VALUES (2, ' Metal Widgets');
INSERT INTO `content_table ` VALUES (3, ' Wooden Widgets');
INSERT INTO `content_table ` VALUES (4, ' Rubber Widgets');
INSERT INTO `content_table ` VALUES (5, ' Stone Widgets');

Once you have completed these two steps you will have a table compete with data to be shown on your website.

Another option would be to utilize your existing product table. If there are hundreds of different models and styles of widgets already in one of the tables in your database, you could utilize the same structure we are learning now to connect directly to that table and display the already existing data.

Step two: Working with your new table:

For dynamic content displays to function there must be a mechanism in place that instructs your web page as to which item should be shown to the visitor. These mechanisms vary in complexity from extremely simple commands to the more complicated use of cookies or IP tracking to determine which item should be displayed.

For this tutorial, we will utilize one of the most effective mechanisms and perhaps the easiest to incorporate. This is the use of a random number generator for deciding which item will be shown.

To create a random number generator using PHP you must first calculate the total number of possible items that you want the system to choose from. In this example we had five items so the maximum number of choices will be 5. The reason we need this number is to limit the random numbers being delivered. If we have five items, we want the number generator to only give us a result of between 1 and 5.

We must now create a variable for our PHP code tha