Linking content through templates

[wjgrayson]

Even though I'm learning Dreamweaver (CS3), I don't know exactly what I should ask or search for,so I'll describe it.

I have a div tag within a container on my home page called "header_footer_row" as well as a Left Nav vertical div tag. When I finalize the layout for the home page, I would like to save it as a template to create other landing pages. But, as I need to change the info on the "header_footer_row" on a monthly basis, I would like that information to update on ALL pages that have the field. Same goes for the nav bar if I decide to delete a button from the home page, it would delete from all other pages created from the template. I have not created the template yet. I guess I'm asking for the same kind of functionality you get with an Excel cellwhere you "copy-link-paste-special" and you only update the data on one cell for all the places you've linked it to.

See attached link. By the way, I sort of know div tags, but not that well. I just got them to behave for me, and I've been applying specific formatting styles to each div tag.

Thanks,
W!

 

[vacunita]

There are several ways you can do this.

Dreamweaver Templates for instance behave in such a manner.

If you edit the template file and save it Dreamweaver will ask to update all pages that where created using that template to reflect those changes.

This of course implies that you'll have to upload all files again onto the hosting server.


You could do this using a programming language such as PHP or ASP.
And just include the file that contains the header information or the nav bar information in each page you develop.

When you edit the file that contains a piece of the page it will automatically update the pages that use those so you'll see the changes pretty much immediately.

In this fashion you only need to upload the file you changed, no need to re-upload the entire site.

Of course the second option requires a bit more knowledge.


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Phil AKA Vacunita
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