Around 130 pubs, clubs and restaurants are reviewed in the Eating & Drinking Guide at madenhead.net. Such a large amount of information benefits from being stored in a database/template system.

The database in question is a simple flat file database, based on an Excel spreadsheet. Changes are made to the data, which includes a review, photograph, date of last update, address and telephone, and the data is uploaded to the site. Then a Perl script is executed which runs through the data and creates the web pages using templates. The script also produces the main index page for the guide and sub index pages listing the establishments by type.

Part of the script produces coded links to a mapping site based on the pub/restaurant's postcode. This gives visitors a useful extra feature - being able to pinpoint the establishment on a map.

Extra pages are easily added, simply by adding another record to the database. And if the layout of the pages in the guide has to be changed, only one file (the template file) needs to be altered - not hundreds of them.

This all makes for a very quick and easy way of updating an information-intensive area of a site.