Suppose i want to create a single page on a web site for the sole purpose of managing bookmarks relevant to the subject matter of the web site itself. Any such page, due to the potential for several categories, might become quite a vast collection of entries, because there could be several top-level categories, and under each of those could be collected several bookmarks. We’ll call that page the Bookmarks: Main page (which, should we use this blog as an example, the Bookmarks page contains categories which happen to be directly reflective of the categories of the blog itself. In the case of a bookmarks page being listed in a source other than a blog, then the categories would simply be “Bookmark Categories”) related to the title of the web site (so the categories, using this blog as an example, are related to such topics as CSS, XHTML, PHP, MySQL, etc.).
Smart development, as i’m learning, starts with preparation for expansion both lateral and longitudinal, or what might be more popularly refereced as simply scalability (i think). Assuming that we were to apply the concept here, then to have scalable bookmarks, we might want to have, i think, bookmarks which would be browsed by sub-category, so that the vast resource can be disected into a more manageble list of bookmarks. The idea of creating a scalable set of Bookmarks: Main page which could be sub-categorized into, for example: Bookmarks: CSS; Bookmarks: XHTML; Bookmarks: PHP; etc., then becomes a challenge of how to create those sub-categories, in a scalable sense, rather automatically, or without having to manually create the sub-categorized bookmark pages, to have them appear in their respective sub-categories as they are entered into the Bookmarks: Main page.
The particular challege here, as i see it, would mean that some sort of tag, or Server Side Scripting function, must be in place on each Bookmark: (Sub-Category) page which would sort-of monitor the main bookmarks page so that this scalability/ or automatic expansion exists such that, depending on which category within the Bookmarks: Main page receives the authoring of a new bookmark, the sub-category bookmarks pages would autormatically reflect that new entry based on the conditional properties imposed by that server side function. in other words, when a new bookmark is added to Bookmarks: Main page, those new bookmarks should automatically appear in the sub-category pages so that the vast content can later be scaled down into a more manageable set of sub-categorized bookmarks.
what i am interested in learning is: “How is this accomplished?”
What kind of Server Side Scripting would need to be in place in order for this to happen? Where would one begin if one wanted to go about managing content in such a manner? My first thought is that it could work somewhat like an Atom feed so that every time there is new content, that content will show not only in its original location, but also “fed” into the sub-category location based on pre-determined criteria. Part of the challenge must be then to find a way to create this “feed” so that it produces accurate placement of the new bookmarks. We wouldn’t want a CSS bookmark to appear under Apache, or a PHP bookmark to appear under CFML. How might this be accomplished? Assuming that we’re imposing no programming convention on the method by which these “dynamic sub-categories” will be populated, how then shall this Bookmarks: Main to Bookmarks: (sub-category) function be created?
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