Blog theme in PHP

Hi there,

We make the PHP site styling with theme options.

We can store the theme options in several way, we can store them using the $_SESSION variable. If there is user account for the visitor, we can store the theme preference in the database also.

Pre requirement: Assuming now we have a basic blog site that is powered by database. It is in model view controller approach. You can find the file we’re based on in the following download:

youthskills-php-blog-theme.tar.gz

We make the theme by following step.

We need the following steps: 1. Hardcode 2 theme styles with CSS. 2. Create a form with multiple radio buttons for theme choosing. 3. Store the theme option in $_SESSION. 4. Allow creating new theme options by creating a database to store CSS. 5. Create a view by displaying all the theme styles, name and links to show/edit. 6. Build a form to create new CSS style and store into the database. 7. Edit the style by showing the form . 8. For each theme style, allow uploading an image thumbnail.

You can find the final source code in the following C9 IDE:

https://ide.c9.io/makzan/youthskills-php-blog-theme

Here is the marking scheme to validate your works.

| mark | description |
| 15   | You have separated the code into model, view and controller. |
| 5    | There is a view to choose theme styles. |  
| 5    | Theme choosing is stored in $_SESSION. (You need to proof it) |
| 5    | Theme applies after choosing theme and switching page. |
| 5    | Themes table is created in database. |
| 5    | Theme applies through database record. |
| 5    | Able to list all themes from database |
| 5    | Clicking on the theme name show an edit theme view |
| 5    | edit theme view allows inputting theme name and CSS rules |
| 5    | able to save theme modification into database. |
| 5    | allow creating new theme by showing a form to input name and CSS rules, saving the form creates a new theme record in database with the input data. |
| 5    | theme choosing shows themes from database. |
| 10   | the first theme shows a modern and elegant look to display a blog and the posts. Used sans-serif font mainly. |
| 10   | the second theme shows a traditional newspaper look which display the blog and posts with a nice typography settings. |
| 10   | the third theme shows a magazine styles way to display blog posts, which includes attractive layout and photo effects. |
| 20   | BONUS: there is comments for each post. The comments are associated to the post record in database. User can input comment in post view. |
| 10   | BONUS: the first 3 themes include styles of the comments |
| 130  | Total |