Approaches

[b][color=green]Different approaches to common problems - user-supplied methods of achieving a goal, where no 'official CodeIgniter' approach is provided or obvious.[/color][/b]

[h2]Explanation[/h2]

This section is in response to the handful of regular forum posts that either cover old ground, or cover subjects for which there is no agreed Right Way of doing something.

What you'll find here is a bunch of [i]very subjective[/i] descriptions of different ways of doing things. It's unlikely that you'll find complete solutions to things, but rather extracts from existing projects that demonstrate a particular approach.

Under each '[b]How can you do this[/b]?' sub-category, each page belongs to one person, and consequently describes exactly one way of approaching a task or problem.

For the [b]novice[/b] this provides an excellent learning resource - they can examine different user's approach to the same problem, picking and choosing as they see fit.

For the more [b]experienced forum user[/b] it means they can point newbies at a more easily locatable and maintainable description of their preferred approach.

[h2]Topics[/h2]

Here's the current list of approaches:

[b]o[/b] I have the welcome page - but now what [b]o[/b] Header and footer and menu on every page [b]o[/b] I want to take my site offline for maintenance

Suggestions: [b]o[/b] [color=grey]Roll-your-own basic user authentication system - perhaps using thody's user-library as base[/color] [b]o[/b] [color=grey]Setting up a debugging suite - firebug, dump() helper function, others[/color]

[color=purple][b]Note to would-be contributors[/b] - it'd be just fantastic if you'd spend the time sharing your approaches with the world, but please resist the temptation to provide a link to another site. First, sites come and go, and dead links are a real pain in the proverbial. Second, off-site material doesn't get discovered by searches within the wiki. Third, the world has enough web pages that are 'lists of links' - we don't need to add to the collection. And finally - the whole idea of this collection of Approaches is so that users can see what [b]you[/b] do - so can you please put your name on anything you contribute, so people can PM you if they want to clarify something?[/color]

[color=grey][i]Note: this page created 2009-08-23 by jedd, and is very much a work in progress. The category/sub-category system of the wiki seems unnecessarily convoluted and difficult to revert changes to, plus I don't have a clear end-goal here - so I'm being especially cautious.[i][/color]