I actually have a need on one of my websites for XML. I need to set up an amazon store that feeds from them and there is a package that uses XML that someone else developed that is available but it looks like it would take half my life to set it up. Plus I would like to feed other vendors into this same shop. I also need to feed news to our community...particularly news that effects women and women's issues. I'm thinking XML is the way to go on this too.

Where is a good place to start with this? Currently everything is HTML4.01, CSS, PHP and Mysql on our site. That is where my experience is. Is there a good community that exchanges information on XML that a newbie can adjust into? Is there a particular book that anyone else has found useful? Any articles?

I've about gone blind and am starting to resemble a geek after hanging out on the W3C website :eek: I now need interaction with real people :cool:

So please if you have any good resources that you have found helpful in learning and using XML, please let me know.

I apologize if I am saying XML and meaning XHTML ... still not totally sure of the difference. TIA.

whenever I start out on something new, I always go to
Webmonkey (http://www.webmonkey.com). they are not the greatest of sites, but are a great place to get started, they always have good intros and primers on all kinds of programming languages.

here's Webmonkey's introduction to XML. (http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/98/41/index1a.html?tw=authoring)

After that...I'd head over to Devshed (http://www.devshed.com). There are huge communities that are prepared to answer questions and help out on a variety of issues. In addition, there are a variety of articles that discuss xml. (http://www.devshed.com/Server_Side/XML)

In addition, if you can clarify just exactly what it is you are trying to do... why don't you check out hotscript's own directory of XML tips and tutorials (http://www.hotscripts.com/XML/Tips_and_Tutorials/index.html)

best of luck.

Drue

if you find any gems... pm me and let me know. :)

Thanks for the reply! I always seem to forget to look at both Devshed and Webmonkey and both are good resources. Will go check them both out.

Let's see if I can explain specifically what I want to do. My most pressing project is to build a shopping page for http://womens-place.com This site is extremely high traffic and high growth. We do not want to use popups and banners at this point. So affiliate banners are out of the question yet we need to bring in some affiliate revenue from the community. I would like to have a shopping page that uses the selected product content from Amazon and any other affiliate we have that will make their content available in XML so that it appears in our sites format. You may be ordering the book from amazon and you know it but the shopping experience is completely womens-place.com. Amazon has a fairly new example in their affiliates area of a new script that works like this but it only feeds in Amazon of course.

This is a pretty early formulation of what I want to do. Ideally a user could shop all they want and then enter in their info at the end and have it transmitted to each individual affiliate. Not sure how feasible that last part REALLY is but wouldn't it be lovely???

I'm really hoping someone else has already done this so I can take the easy way out and just tweak but so far I have not found anything even close.

I'm off to wander the web in search of enlightenment and the easy way out. I'll let you know what I find :cool:

Hi,

I have been working with XML and PHP for quite some time now. Also have done some work with online bookshops. XML and XSL seem the answer to your prayers. Particularly since it's so easy to perfrom XSL transformations with PHP.

As for references i can highly recommends w3schools.org It's always a good idea to keep the w3c reference at hand as well.

all the best