How to Build a Lottery Club Website
By Steve Aycock
A lottery club website is a convenient way for club members to stay up to date with club happenings. To build a lottery club website you'll need to create a database, write software to connect to the database, and design website pages to display club data retrieved from the database.
Building a database
Step 1
Create a new database to store club information such as members, dates of lottery games played, types of lottery games played, tickets purchased for each date and winning numbers for each date. You can use any database program, but for a website it's best to stick with a popular website database such as MySQL or Oracle. MySQL is free and has a large online user support community. For example, MySQL.com has information on getting started with MySQL.
Step 2
Add tables to your database for the information you'll be storing. Tables are the logical structures within a database that hold records. Typically, tables correspond to a single type of data or information. For example, you may have a members table, a played numbers table and a winning numbers table.
Step 3
Input data records to your database tables. For example, you may want to start with something simple like the member list. Enter into the members table of your database a record for each lottery club member. Enter records using a command line interface or graphical interface according to the instructions for your database system.
Connecting to the database and testing
Step 1
Write a software routine to connect your website pages to the database. The software routine will need to access your database and retrieve data for display on your website. Keeping with the MySQL example, MySQL.com offers an excellent overview of the process for building database-driven website software in PHP. If you aren't familiar with software development, you may want to hire someone to help.
Step 2
Design website pages to display your lottery club data. Create a file for each page and write the page code in HTML using a text editor such as Notepad. You'll need code on each page that will cause your software routine to execute on your website server computer and retrieve data from your database.
Step 3
Transfer the files to your website hosting service. Use an FTP utility program to transfer the database, software and website page files according to the instructions from your website hosting service provider.
Step 4
Test the software and website pages. Access your lottery club website as a member would and verify that the website looks right and that the database information is being retrieved correctly. Make any necessary changes to fix problems.
References
Writer Bio
Steve Aycock has a background in engineering and law. Writing since 2002, Aycock has been published in "IPLaw360" and BNA's "Patent, Trademark and Copyright Journal." Aycock earned a Bachelor of Science in computer engineering from the University of South Florida and a Juris Doctor from The George Washington University.