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Before building a site, every webmaster has to make a decision on what layout
method to use. Most seem to go with either a frame or a table-based layout, the
latter being more popular in these days. While both of these have their advantages
and disadvantages, a frame-based site is usually easier to update. If you happen
to have a 200-page site with the same navigation on every page, adding one link
to the navigation menu might require you to edit all of the pages if the design
is built with tables. On the other hand, if the site uses frames, you can get
by with changing just a few files and save yourself a lot of time.
No, I'm not trying to convince you to switch to frames. I myself use tables
and am not going to change my layout. The only problem is that over time, sites
tend to grow. It just might be possible to edit around 20 pages when you want
to change something, but when we start talking 50 or over one hundred, it just
doesn't seem like a good idea. Unless you are prepared to spend hours trying
to keep your navigation menu up to date, you have to come up with a better way
of doing things.
SSI's to the Rescue
===================
If your host supports Server Side Includes and is running Apache, you can use
this article to make your table design as easy to maintain as it would be if
you were using frames. The best part is that visitors won't even notice that
you have changed anything. After the new system is in place, they will see exactly
the same design and HTML code as before, but you will be saved from hours of
monotonous work.
Server Side Includes, or SSI's, can be used in many ways. With them you can
execute CGI programs, display the current date & time on your page and do
plenty of other things as well. In this article, we use them for including external
files to your HTML. The idea is to create a separate file from your navigation
menu and use SSI's to point to it, requiring you to merely edit one file when
you wish to change the navigation.
Should you have some knowledge of Server Side Includes, you might be a little
worried. Doesn't this require that you rename all your pages from ".html"
to ".shtml" if you want it to work? That would take a lot of time,
break the links that are pointing to your site and you might have to resubmit
your pages to the search engines. Is it reasonable to go through all that trouble
to make maintaining your site a little easier?
Fortunately, there's no need to start renaming any files. You can simply instruct
the server to treat your ".html" files as ".shtml" files
and execute all SSI instructions in them. This can be done with a ".htaccess"
file. If you already have one, you'll have to edit it. If you don't, open up
a text editor, such as Notepad, and paste the following lines into a blank file.
Be sure to replace .html with .htm, if you're using that extension.
Options Includes
AddType text/html .html
AddHandler server-parsed .html
Save the file in "All files" mode and name it ".htaccess".
Include the quotes so that Notepad won't decide to name the file ".htaccess.txt".
Changing Your Pages
===================
After the .htaccess file has been created, you'll have to make changes to your
HTML files. To be on the safe side, take backups of them before doing anything.
Then, paste the HTML you use to generate the menu from one of your pages into
a blank file. Save the file as "navig.html" for example. Next, remove
the navigation menu from all of your pages. Replace it with the following line:
What you're doing is telling the server to insert the code from "navig.html"
into the page. This will be done before the page is sent to the user who has
requested it, so anyone visiting your site will merely see a normal HTML file.
When you have finished editing your files, connect to your host via FTP and
upload the ".htaccess" file, the "navig.html" file and the
new versions of your content pages.
Then it is time for the true test, trying to visit your site and see what happens.
If you have done everything correctly, you should see that your pages look the
same as before. However, if you make a simple change to the "navig.html"
file, it will apply to the navigation menu of every page. What used to take
minutes or even hours can now be done in seconds, giving you the possibility
to use that valuable time to do something other than changing the HTML code
of each page separately.
About the Author:
Lauri Harpf runs the A Promotion Guide website, where he offers free information
about search engines, directoriesand other promotion methods. His site can be
found at http://www.apromotionguide.com/
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