We have been asked to redo the footer on our site to include some new links. Unfortunately, when the site was built, the footer is not included automatically on every page. So, as it stands, we need to go back to each page individually on make the necessary changes. We could do a find and replace but ideally the footer would be an include that would be updated in one file (i.e. w/ CSS) and would make global changes. I have read there are different ways to do this (forgive my ignorance but it was awhile ago when I researched this) - .shtml include, css, javascript - but there were drawbacks/ concerns with each of these. Our pages are .html and are created and managed in Dreamweaver.
Any suggestions for approaching this issue. Please detail possible concerns/ drawbacks with any of the implementations you offer.
Thanks,
mama
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Would agree with doing it server side.
There are not really any concerns with includes, except if you have it in your htdocs someone could in theory just load your footer in the browser if they new the filename and location, but they can't really do anything with it.
If it's PHP you're running:
<?php
include("location/yourfile
?>
You will have to tell the server to run HTML through PHP as well.
Add the following to .htaccess
AddType application/x-httpd-php .html
simplest solution is as follows:
1. make sure your server has server-side-includes active
2. rename all your pages to .shtml, and let dreamweaver update all the links
3. prepare a file "footer.ssi", and put in it the html code that you want on the footer. This would be the new code with the required changes, not the one you have now. Note that this file does not have to be a 'full' html tree, but for clarity I would make sure that it is a 'full branch'- in other words, if your footer is in a table, this file will start with <table> and end with </table>. ( do not include the closing </body> or </html>).
4. Do a 'Find and Replace' on all the files, and do so for the 'Source Code'. In the 'Find' box, put all the current html footer. In the replace box put: <!--#include virtual="footer.ssi"-->. Make sure to select "Ignore whitespace' and NOT select 'Match case'. Then hit 'Replace All'
That's it.
Now, to easily be able to use dreamweaver you also want to go to Edit->Preferences->Invisib
Also there is an article on the Macromedia site explaining how to add editors for extensions. This is required only if you want to edit the footer.ssi file, viewing the source with the correct coloring and indentation.
Good Luck,
--Foosy
css is for styles, you can not use it to create text. (unless you want to restrict users to Opera and Mozilla with something like: h2:before {content: "footer information goes here";}
The only other option I see is to just do the 'Find and Replace' which will replace all your current footer with a whole new footer for all the pages.
By the way, if the footer is slightly different on each page, you can still use a find and replace but with regular expressions. It may take some tweeking however if you have many pages it will do them all.
You could also look at Dreamweaver Library items. These allow you to save sections of HTML code that can be added to pages in the site from the Library palette with drag and drop ease. Libraries make it easy to update code across many pages, as edits to a Library item will be reflected in all pages that reference it throughout the site.
You can save any HTML as a library item (*.lbi file) and after you have dragged and dropped it into one HTML file, you can see the code to use when doing a global search and replace.
Hope this helps,
Rei.
reinis,
This may be the way to go. Any special problems with the .lbi?
I looked briefly at some documentation and it said that the files are referenced not inserted into the page - any implications for load time?
what about css issues - do you put the necessary css into the .lbi as well.
Other concerns?
mama
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by: SteggsPosted on 2007-07-12 at 13:54:54ID: 19476109
Hello,
Yes includes are great... I wouldn't use javascript include as people can turn javascript off. I would do it server side e.g. shtml or php
You can easily find tutorials on the web
Steggs