In Need of Searchable Database For a Card Shop

[nite_monkey]

There is this local trading card shop that my friend and I are helping the owner out with. We wanted to create a website that would let people easily type in the name of a card that they are looking for (or just do a search of several cards based on various search terms).
If the card is in the database (the shop has that card) then it would show a page that lists the card's name, a link to a website that shows more info about the card, how many the shop has, and how much it costs.
I don't know how to code php or mysql, so I can't really build this from scratch.

I could just create a table that would have all the information, but that has a few issues.
1. the owner of the store would have to manually edit the source code of the webpage to add/remove/update cards. (I could use wordpress and he could just edit a page as a workaround for this.)
2. The only way you could search for cards is by using your web browser's search feature. (you could only search for specific card names, not things like card type(eg. land, creature, instant, etc.).)
3. This wouldn't really be very organised, and the average user could be overwhelmed by this and not want to use it.

Does anyone know of something simple and easy to use that could accomplish this?

[mouser]

This is clearly something that a lot of websites could benefit from.. A simple script that shows a table and allows searching and sorting, whose data can be easily edited by an administrator.

I'm quite sure there are such scripts though I don't know of any.  I look forward to hear what other people can find.

I'm sure any evaluation and recommendation you could make would be very useful to others.  Let us know what you find.

[Renegade]

This problem has been solved at least a million times. Stop thinking about "cards" and just think about "products". Then just look for some kind of ecommerce or shopping cart or gallery script/application and you're 90% done.

There are lots of scripting sites out there for PHP or Perl or ASP.NET or RoR or whatever language you want to use, and each one has lots of solutions for this problem.

The question is how big of a solution do you want? Browse around and you'll see them. Try "hotscripts" or "programmer's paradise" as they have lots of things like that.

[kilele]

You may want to explore the approach googleforms+googlesheet+googlesites.
Please share with us your findings.
This article could be of help.

[nite_monkey]

I think I am going to go with wordpress, because I already know how to use it, so I won't have to learn anything new, which will make things so much easier when I go to explain to the shop owner how to use it. Each card will be a blog post. And each blog post will have a category tied to it. (creature, enchantment, artifact, etc.) And then to further make it easier to search for a card, each blog post will also have tags tied to it. (eg. a green elf shaman would have the tags: green,forest,elf,shaman) then to make it look less like a wordpress blog, and more like a card database website, I disabled the pages tab at the top of the theme (there is only one page anyways, the news/anouncments page), and then added to the sidebar the categories widget, and named it card database, so that people can get a list of cards based on card type. (creature, enchantment, etc.)

[kilele]

I don't know if this could be a valid solution : create an opds catalog with calibre. Good luck.

[Paul Keith]

I think I am going to go with wordpress, because I already know how to use it, so I won't have to learn anything new, which will make things so much easier when I go to explain to the shop owner how to use it. Each card will be a blog post. And each blog post will have a category tied to it. (creature, enchantment, artifact, etc.) And then to further make it easier to search for a card, each blog post will also have tags tied to it. (eg. a green elf shaman would have the tags: green,forest,elf,shaman) then to make it look less like a wordpress blog, and more like a card database website, I disabled the pages tab at the top of the theme (there is only one page anyways, the news/anouncments page), and then added to the sidebar the categories widget, and named it card database, so that people can get a list of cards based on card type. (creature, enchantment, etc.)

If you're going to resort to Wordpress, I think it would be more convenient to take advantage of services like Evernote, Springpad, Tumblr (compare their archives with Wordpress) and Pinstamatic.

Wordpress tags...are kind of iffy.

You are bound to end up with something like this:

http://www.cyborganize.org/clarity/the-core-workflow/

When you should be aiming instead for something like this:

http://zoywiki.com/index.php/LoH/Genesis/Common

[SeraphimLabs]

It sounds like what you need though is something to the tune of MTG's Gatherer.

Gatherer in action

Only real change would be deleting the card rulings field and adding qty in stock and price fields.

I'd have to re-examine the searchable image gallery solution I wrote some time ago. It used PHP and MySQL to display an image with some corresponding descriptive text, and had a (rather incomplete) search capability that was workable enough to let you search by artist or description.

[wraith808]

I think I am going to go with wordpress, because I already know how to use it, so I won't have to learn anything new, which will make things so much easier when I go to explain to the shop owner how to use it. Each card will be a blog post. And each blog post will have a category tied to it. (creature, enchantment, artifact, etc.) And then to further make it easier to search for a card, each blog post will also have tags tied to it. (eg. a green elf shaman would have the tags: green,forest,elf,shaman) then to make it look less like a wordpress blog, and more like a card database website, I disabled the pages tab at the top of the theme (there is only one page anyways, the news/anouncments page), and then added to the sidebar the categories widget, and named it card database, so that people can get a list of cards based on card type. (creature, enchantment, etc.)

If you're going to go with Wordpress, check out ShopperPress.  I used it for a friend's site, and it worked well.  It was a no-brainer for me b/c I got it for $30, but it's good even at $79 which it's on sale for on a regular basis.  I wouldn't pay $199 for it (but that's just me).