PHP, mySQL, Excel files - best solution?

Here's what I need to accomplish: I'm designing a site for a company that has roughly 150 products, each of which has specs in it's own excel spreadsheet. Rather than design 150 separate html pages I have decided to take this opportunity to educate myself and learn how to build a dynamic site.

I've done my homework over the past week and decided that I'm going to use PHP and a mySQL database, but beyond that I just have no idea how to pull it all together. My concerns are: getting the excel data into the database, using php to retrieve data and create a product page template, ease of updating the database, and most importantly am I in way over my head. Is this a realistic project for a beginner to development, and what other issues should I be worried about? I am fine with HTML, btw - not a concern.

Should I just create 150 html pages, or can I do this? I will be working with 3 other designers if that matters. Thanks for any input, I appreciate the help.

-Josh

Hi, the php mysql solution is excellent, and here you can find many useful tutorials and some support on the forums.
The conversion from excel to mysql is easy.
If your site is at an external service provider it should be useful to ask him the possiblility to connect to mysql from other than localhost (at least for the time necessary to put up the site) even if this is a bit unsecure.
You can find many useful tools to support your work, like MySQLNavigator and phpEd, and Allaire Homesite is fine to write php too.
If you'd like my opinion on how to setup this, just ask.

Thanks pabloj, the server I will be working with is here at work and I don't think it is even set up with PHP or mySQL at the moment, but I'm gonna let our admin worry about that. I should have also mentioned that I'm working on a Mac, is that going to be a problem?

One of the best tutorials/articles I've read so far was Thomas Kehoe's "Website Database Basics With PHP and MySQL" on this site. It was really helpful for me, just wanted to pass that along. Thanks for all the help!

josh, having mac as a developing os should not be, and devshed has an article on how to set up things on it http://www.devshed.com/Server_Side/...nOSX/page1.html

Shoot, I don't have OS X yet. My deal is that I am a graphic designer working on Mac OS 9.2. I've recently taken up an interest in the programming side of web design but graphics is still my mainstay. So is it unreasonable for me to experiment with PHP and mySQL in a Mac environment? The tutorials and experiments I've done so far with PHP (strictly PHP, nothing with mySQL yet) have all worked fine. What problems am I going to run into? Thanks for any advice....

Uhm.. I do not know if they have mysql version for mac 9.2. Frankly, I do not know how to install mysql on mac os x, I just know it is possible and they have that version in download section. Guess the best way for you would be to search google for mysql on mac...

I think I might be confusing you, sorry. My site will be hosted on a Linux machine but all the coding and file transferring will be done by me on my Mac. So in order to preview all my work I'm going to just ftp to the server and constantly upload. Is this feasible? Will I have issues connecting to my database? From what I've read most people use phpMyAdmin to connect over the web, will that work for me?

So you do not want to have developing station offline on your box, correct? phpmyadmin is used pretty often for mysql managin, and it is quite nice utility, so I'd recommend you to get used to it.

Correct, I will not be installing php and mysql on my machine to develop offline. I basically leave my ftp client open and just constantly upload and preview. So phpmyadmin will work through a browser on my mac?

Definitely. As long as you don't use browser from stone age, you should be fine.