Main Page Elements help please!

[Guest_imported]

Hi guys,

Basically i know html and thats about it, so please dont blind me with loads of techy stuff.

My site is getting very big and i am fed up of having to change each page when i say change the navigation bar.
I want to make a site "template" which has some basic elements which it is made up of: So i want navigation to go at the side and i want it to be sourced from a main place on the server, then i want the main body of the page to be sourced from another place. Do you see what i mean??

Is XML the right thing to this in?? If so how would i do it?
Please help me,

Dan

 

[Guest_imported]

Danny, I'm not sure you need xml to do what you are trying to do. Sounds to me like just a main page that includes a frame structure and secondary pages that are your navigation information and then your main content would work.

I've used such a structure for a long time; take a look at:

http://www.cs.unc.edu/Courses/comp118/

. You can do a view source on your browser menu to see the frame structure and then right click on individual frames and view source there to see that html.

jbs

 

[dianal]

Yep,
That is one option.
Other option is to use server-side includes SSI if you have such possibillity on your web server.
Other option is to use XML as unified data storage and diffrent XSL as ways to show the same data with different styles.
You can think how to organize your data into one (or may be more) xml file(s) and how to display necessary information.
I would think somethink like:
<mysite url=&quot;

http://www.mysite.com&quot;>

<section id=&quot;1&quot;>
<heading>Products</heading>
<contents>Bla</contents>
</section>
<section id=&quot;2&quot;>
<heading>Services</heading>
<contents>Bla 2</contents>
</section>
</mysite>

The backward is that if the xml is too big - it will take long time to transform it.

A link to XML tutorial:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...s/xmlsdk30/htm/xmtuttut1authoringelements.asp

(Sorry for that link, if you are familiar with XML.)

D.