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PaulKraemer1
PaulKraemer1
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Common banner/nav bar on every page

Mar 29, 2010 7:57 AM

Hi,

 

I am using Dreamweaver CS4.  I am relatively new to web site design and I have been reading several DreamWeaver books trying to get up to speed.

 

I want to create a banner image with a navigation bar that I want to be displayed at the top every page in my site.  I want to do this in the easiest / most currently accepted / recommended way.  From what I have read so far, it seems that one way of doing this is to create a Dreamweaver template that includes the banner and navigation bar, and to base all of my pages on this template.

 

Before I give this a try, I was wondering if anyone could suggest a better way of doing this sort of thing.

 

Thanks in advance,
Paul

931 Views   4 Replies   Latest reply: martcol, Mar 29, 2010 9:40 PM
 
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  • martcol
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    1. martcol,
    Mar 29, 2010 8:00 AM   in reply to PaulKraemer1
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    I think that using a Server Side Include is easier (SSI).

     

    I do it with PHP.

     

    You need to look into how to do it but it's not hard.

     

    In fact, I love doing it.  It sounds completely web-geeky and makes me feel like I know what I'm doing!

     

    Martin

     
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  • osgood_
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    2. osgood_,
    Mar 29, 2010 8:24 AM   in reply to PaulKraemer1
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    Depends what youre doing really. If its a small number of pages then a Dreamweaver template can be ok although I've found that for what ever reason some of the pages don't update from time to time. They are a bit of a pain.

     

    If its a small site you can generally overcome this by changing the links that don't update by hand.

     

    By far the best way is as Martcol has suggested using server side includes.

     
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  • PaulKraemer1
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    3. PaulKraemer1,
    Mar 29, 2010 8:09 PM   in reply to osgood_
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    Hi MartCol and Osgood,

     

    Thanks for the advice.  Now that you mention SSI, it reminded me that at least five years ago I did this using FrontPage.  I just looked at my html from back then and it looks like this:

     

    <!--webbot bot="Include" U-Include="top.htm" TAG="BODY" startspan -->

     

    Forgive my ignorance, but is this a server side include?  I remember it being pretty easy to do - I just put my header info in a separate file and did *something* to include it.  I can't remember exactly how I did it though, and I know longer have FrontPage on my PC.  I am not sure if I used a FrontPage extension that may be outdated.

     

    Thanks again,
    Paul

     
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  • martcol
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    4. martcol,
    Mar 29, 2010 9:40 PM   in reply to PaulKraemer1
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    PaulKraemer1 wrote:

     

    ...I just put my header info in a separate file and did *something* to include it.

     

    That sounds like more-or-less it.

     

    I have never used FrontPage so don't have a clue on that one.  I'm not sure whether that's an SSI or not.

     

    Here are a couple of tutorial pages on using includes that explain how to do it with PHP but that's not the only way.

     

    http://www.tizag.com/phpT/include.php

    http://www.stevedawson.com/article0012.php

     

    Martin

     
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