Game Quote Submission System

I eventually came to the decision to use Movable Type's built-in comment system instead of taking the time to roll my own. I created what I'll call a shadow entry in the blog. Basically, it's an entry that will forever stay at Draft instead of moving to Publish.

After adding that to the database, I grabbed the entry_id out of the mt_entry table, and copied the Individual Archive Entry template into a new Index Template I called Submit Random Game Quote. I snipped out every template tag having to do with entries, and I was left with a title and an html form. I put the entry_id of the shadow entry into the form fields, and that was it. My submission page is complete.

And here is the code I used to pull out the Random Game Quotes:

$link = mysql_connect ("localhost", "username", "password");

mysql_select_db ("mt", $link);

$query = "SELECT comment_id
          FROM mt_comment
          WHERE comment_blog_id = 1
            AND comment_entry_id = 26";

$res = mysql_query ($query, $link) or die ("Invalid query: $query<br />". mysql_error ());

$total = 0;
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array ($res)) {
  $id[$total] = $row[0];
  $total++;
}

$quoteId = $id[rand (0, $total - 1)];

$query = "SELECT comment_text,  comment_author, comment_email
          FROM mt_comment
          WHERE comment_id = $quoteId";

$res = mysql_query ($query, $link) or die ("Invalid query: $query<br />".mysql_error ());
$row = mysql_fetch_array ($res);

$quote = str_replace ("\n", "<br />", $row[0]);

echo $quote."<br /><br />\n";
echo "<em>Submitted by:</em> <a href='mailto:".$row[2]."'>".$row[1]."</a><br />\n";

echo "<br />\n";
echo "<center><font size=-2><a href='/submitquote.php'>Submit a new Game Quote</a></font><br /></center>\n";

p.