New here! - What are page databases and when to use them.

[Ryan Manson]

Hello all, 

I've recently started up a website with invision I've been reading the Help guides which are very useful although I still found myself wondering exactly are databases & when to use databases in the pages section. The way I understand it is a database stores information, should I create a new database for each section of my website IE homepage, articles, forums, resources or just use the same one? I dont understand exactly why I need to link a database with a specific page isn't all the information already stored in a database for my entire site? 

 

Thanks for your help!

[Ryan Manson]

Edited

[Meddysong]

It's terminology which lends itself to confusion, unfortunately. The whole IPS site sits within a single MySQL database, which is how we'd conventionally understand the expression. But there's a feature within Pages called a database too. You don't need to worry about creating a Pages database for your homepage, forums etc. The database feature is what is used to create IPS's Guides, Providers page, Developers' area etc. You would use it if you wanted articles on your site, although Pages comes with that built in so at least you wouldn't have to create it yourself. 

[Steph Jensen]

Is there a place to learn more about these databases?
I've wanted to set up databases for users to fill out race results and pull info on tracks/lap times/cars from different databases, but the info i have found was pretty basic.

[opentype]

1 minute ago, Steph Jensen said:

Is there a place to learn more about these databases?

Help Guides → Suite Applications → Pages 

[Joel R]

Databases in IP.Pages is a directory of records.  Those records can be news articles, recipes, quotes, profiles, instructions, whatever you want.  You have a database of model parts, a database of important historical figures, a database of tutorials, etc.

It's one of the most powerful tools in IPS and can help you build a repository of information or even something as simple as a news section.  

The database is just a storage of recordd.  You need have an IP.Pages page to display the database, otherwise it will never appear on your website.  

[Steph Jensen]

On 10/31/2017 at 3:34 PM, opentype said:

Help Guides → Suite Applications → Pages 

Can you point me more specifically to where i can read/learn about using entries from other databases in a new database?
For example, i make a database about car and then i make a database that needs one of the fields in the entries to be pulled from the cars database?

[opentype]

37 minutes ago, Steph Jensen said:

 i make a database about car and then i make a database that needs one of the fields in the entries to be pulled from the cars database?

That isn’t a feature. You can link and cross-link records across all Pages databases, but by default, that will only show the linked title of the record. That’s it. 

Example: You have a book database and a book author database. In the book database, you create a “database relationship” field linking to the author database. Now when creating a book, you can just link to the author and have the books titles of the author automatically show on the author’s page. 

[Numbered]

I imagine Forums as a particular case of Databases. So if I need something community-like tree like a forums, but not forums - it is database section.