Noob needs help with page design.

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mojo999

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Dec 29, 2007
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I'm in the progress of creating my first website with dreamweaver. After I made some pages, I realized that with every new page that I want to add to my website, I would have to go back to every previous pages and manually make a link to the new page on the navigation bar. Is there a better or faster way of doing this? Please help.
 


Noob giving Noob advice beware -

Set up a template and then use Server Side Includes (SSI) in it. Unless I've read your question wrong this should give you what you want.
 
thanks

Thanks, I'll try that. On another note, I notice that you are from South Wales. That's on top of my travel list.
 
Just come back from a week in Snowdonia.

Absolutely blew me away. I've seen a bit of the world but this was the first time I've been up there. Equals some of the best scenery I've seen anywhere. Do yourself a favour and visit it.
 
I second the CMS route, Joomla, Drupal, Wordpress.

Single landing pages have numbered days, IMHO. A CMS will give the site a consistent look throughout, and can be stuffed with content in a very short amount of time. Users can be persuaded to add content for you. Themes and Templates are readily available and aren't really too hard to conjure up for yourself. Articles can be cued up and then posted automatically on a set date and time.

I prefer Joomla but have recently gotten back into Wordpress with ver 2.6 and the Revolution premium themes. It now gets much closer to being a true CMS instead of just a blog platform. They say SEO is better in WP than Joomla, but I don't know. Wordpress pings by nature, Joomla must be made to do it.
 
You guys are all correct, some kind of CMS is probably the way to go but in answer to the question, PHP includes is probably the easiest route. Very simple. First your pages which use the includes must be a .php extension not the .html you probably are using. So, rename index.html to index.php. Cut the code from your page which directly relates to the nav and create a new blank doc. Paste the code into the blank document and save it as something like nav.html. Then where you did have the navigation code in your index page just put <?php include("nav.html"); ?> This will simply insert the code from the nav.html file into any page you use the include statement. When you need to add a page just edit the nav.html file and all pages will update. You can even use DW to write the include statement INSERT - PHP objects - INCLUDES.
Hope that helps

BTW unless you are running a local testing server the includes wont work when you preview locally but it will work on your host.
 
use a CMS, but at the very least use php include

<?php include("menu.php"); ?> on every page where you menu goes. so when youre menu changes, you just change the menu file.

noob
 
Go for a CMS for sure.

Often times, if you go with a well known CMS there are tons of free or inexpensive templates out there that can help create the website you are aiming for.

Install, add content.
 
If you want to keep your files in html use something like this.

<!--#include virtual="menu.php"-->

You can include html or php. If you are on an IIS server for some reason it is not hard to have your html parsed for php.
 
I'm going to buck the trend here... started off with wordpress and now design everything using a combination of CSS/PHP. I find that way I can build sites exactly how I want them.
 
Personally I do not see why anyone would want to use anything other than WordPress.

It has a massive amount of great plugins that can be utilised by any kind of site.
 
WordPress is good indeed but it would be nice if you know how to customize it.
So if the guy is trying to build his site from scratch, he is actually learning new things and it would be easier when he switches to wordpress, joomla or whatever...
 
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