Intro: Flash is a great tool for websites, but sometimes it is a pain to make Flash behave the way you wish when maintaining content. We often “drive” Flash from a database, using PHP to read/write information and then communicate with Flash. Tweetsie, a customer who uses a lot of Flash in their site, needed to be able to schedule what was being shown on the home page. We did a basic little scheduling application fro them. To see more, read on….
We are starting to do more and more flash user interfaces. And they are pretty cool, I must say. One of our customers is Tweetsie Railroad (http://www.tweetsie.com), a kid’s theme park, located in the mountains of North Carolina. From the spring through late autumn, Tweetsie has a number of special events they host and sell tickets to.
The homepage for Tweetsie is all in flash, with a center “panel” that depicts the next upcoming special event. Along the bottom of the home page are “blocks” that highlight other attractions or events at the park. Here is a screenshot:
Tweetsie wanted to be able to schedule the date for the “panel” and the “blocks” so they could control when the panel and blocks would change, based on when a special event was coming up (and when the previous event had ended). To do this, we created an administrative area which allowed them to set start dates for the panel and block. They can also preview any flash file (you’ll see there is a [View] link) in case they wish to notify us to change something about the flash. Here is a screenshot of this particular administrative feature:
This admin area writes the schedule to a database table. Before the homepage renders, the database table is read, the proper swf file - based on date - for the panel and each block is selected (all done with one SQL select statement, for speed), and variables are sent to flash in the homepage HTML. Thus when the homepage HTML appears, it simply shows the proper flash file.
Tweetsie’s password protected administrative area also allows them to general mailing lists, archive their contact requests, post news and events, post job openings and even create directions to Tweetsie from new cities/locations. All content maintenance for static and dynamic pages is done by one marketing person.
Tweetsie has been a wonderful client with a lot of vision and that good ol’ southern charm. We enjoy working with them very much.