Dumping frames - what should I use? SSI? PHP? Shared borders

vardiss · Joined: 02 Jun 2006 Posts: 13

I've decided that frames are no good. So I'm redoing my website.

But I liked the ease of frames in adding pages to my web site while maintaining the logo border across the top, the navigation bar to the left, and the photo bar to the right.

What should I use to replace them that can give me the same appearance and ease of use? SSI? PHP? Shared borders in FrontPage?

Thanks,

Vardiss
www.eastwestcultural.org

Corey Bryant · Posted: Sun Jun 04, 2006 4:42 am

I use file includes myself - handled by ASP. Otherwise, SSI is fine, but I do not recommend JavaScript. Check out Included Content.

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vardiss · Joined: 02 Jun 2006 Posts: 13

Thanks for the reply!

Can you recommend any good online tutorials to allow me to make the change-over as quickly and easily as possible?

I don't want to do anything fancy. Just a top border with two gifs, a left border with navigation links and a right border with some more gifs.

Vardiss
www.eastwestcultural.org

Corey Bryant · Posted: Sun Jun 04, 2006 9:32 am

It depends on which one you choose.

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vardiss · Joined: 02 Jun 2006 Posts: 13

My server god says I should use PHP includes.

Can you suggest a good tutorial to quickly add a banner at the top, navigation bar on the left and pictures on the right?

I want to try and duplicate my current appearance if possible.

Thanks,

Vardiss
www.eastwestcultural.org

Corey Bryant · Posted: Tue Jun 06, 2006 10:08 am

Besides the link above check out PHP Include files

(under your profile you can add your signature - that way you don't have to type it in manually everytime - this is how yu add your signature on most forums.)

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vardiss · Joined: 02 Jun 2006 Posts: 13

I've looked at the tutorials and I'm ready to move ahead with PHP Includes.

If I understand correctly, I create some tables:
Top banner table,
Left navigation table
Right graphic table
Center content table

Then to change each page, I just PHP Include different content into the Center Content Table.

Is this correct?

Also, just to confirm before I do all this work: this solution will solve these two problems right?

Unlike with frames:
1) Each page will now have its own URL
2) Pages will now be visible to search engines.

Thanks for all the help!

Vardiss

Corey Bryant · Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2006 12:11 pm

Well each page will always have its won URL - even with frames, - you just might not see the URL in the address bar.

You includes would more than likely be the top banner, left nav and right graphic possibly. The content would be the page itself that would somewhat change.

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vardiss · Joined: 02 Jun 2006 Posts: 13

I got mugged by another part of real life. I'm ready to make the switch.

I broke out the four bits of content: main content, and the 3 banners:
top, left and right.

So is the best way to do this to create tables for the banners so that they get formatted correctly?

Thanks,

Vardiss

www.eastwestcultural.org

Corey Bryant · Posted: Mon Jun 19, 2006 10:18 am

Yes you can do something like

vardiss · Joined: 02 Jun 2006 Posts: 13

Thanks! You are a god!

I've got the first page up and running so everything should go pretty quickly now.

One question: The left navigation bar is now an include. I want to make it so that when you click on 'Home' it brings you back to www.eastwestcultural.org no matter which page you're on. But I can only get it to work with an href relative to the main page: i.e.
<a href="index.php">

If I try to make it a URL that will work from any page: i.e.
<a href="www.eastwestcultural.org/index.php">

I get this instead: www.eastwestcultural.org/www.eastwestcultural.org/index.php

Any ideas why it's doing this? Or, more importantly, how to fix it? Smile

Thanks again!

Vardiss
www.eastwestcultural.org

Corey Bryant · Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2006 4:25 am

Try using a virtual path or an absolute path.

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vardiss · Joined: 02 Jun 2006 Posts: 13

Thanks the absolute addresses fixed it.

Hmm, there are lots of unexpected developments in this switch to PHP Includes

Now I'm wrestling with text colors which were never an issue before. Because PHP Includes 'include' the code into the body it means that the white text/yellow vlink that I had chosen to contrast with my blue navigation bar turns the vlinks yellow on the main section which has a light background. So I'm having contrast problems. I turned off vlink but the default purple vlink is not so great against the blue navigation bar either.

So I've been scratching my head to figure out how to change the text color in the main section which comes after the navigation bar. Since text color ='000080' is in the BODY section that's before the nav bar so that doesn't work.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Vardiss
www.eastwestcultural.org

Corey Bryant · Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2006 11:24 am

Use styles. The vlink is going to come from your main opening body tag of course. Your includes will not have a <body> or a <head> in them.

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vardiss · Joined: 02 Jun 2006 Posts: 13

Another gotcha has surfaced.

When I convert a page from frames to includes that opens links in new windows it works fine offline but when I upload it, it opens the links in the same window.

What's with this?

Any (quick) way around it?

Thanks,

Vardiss