Web Site Maintenance Made Easy

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Anyone who has ...
a web site with many pages for an extended periodof time knows the ... of having to edit a word or date that recurs oneach page, such as ...
... Having t Anyone who has maintained a web site with many pages for an extended periodof time knows the nightmare of having to edit a word or date that recurs oneach page, such as copyright information.
Having to edit every single pagecan be very time-consuming and tedious and often gets avoided for as long aspossible (usually too long). But it doesn't have to be that way.
By usingsimple Server Side Includes (SSI), you can streamline and simplify themaintenance of your site.SSI can be used to accomplish a variety of things on your web site includingrunning CGI scripts and posting the results on the web page, posting thecurrent time and date on the page, posting the date of the last update, etc.However, I will not get into the technical details of how SSI works or themore advanced functions. In this article, I'll discuss the simplest use ofSSI, the "Include" command.
Before you can implement this SSI strategy, makesure you know whether your web site host allows the use of SSI. If itdoesn't, find a host that does.The "Include" command allows you to create a text file with your commoninformation, then place a directive in your HTML file that "points" to thetext file.
When you view the web page, the server places the contents of thetext file in where the directive is in the HTML file. You can use thistrick for anything that recurs on each page of your website.
For instance,you can put a header and footer on each page. The header and footer would becontained in text files called "header.txt" and "footer.txt".
These fileswould contain the html that recurs on each page, such as text links, contactinformation, copyright information, etc. In place of this html on each page,you would place these directives:Now, whenever anyone views the pages containing those directives, the serverwill place the contents of the text files in the appropriate place and theviewer will see the header and footer.
Whenever a change is needed withinthe header or footer, only ONE file needs to be edited, the text file. Allof the pages using that file will be "automatically" updated.
Changing thecopyright date or address or phone number on every page of your web sitewill now take only 30 seconds because only one file has to be edited!The easiest way to do this is to create a web page with everything you'dlike to have on it. Those parts that will recur on every other page arewhere you will use SSI.
All you have to do is "cut & paste" all of the htmlthat will be used on each page, pasting it into a text file. Where you "cut"the html, replace it with the directive, such as:Do the same thing for the footer, if needed.
Save the HTML files using SSIwith the extension ".shtml". Also, depending on how your server is set upwith your host, you may have to make sure the text file is in the samedirectory as the .shtml file.This also makes the initial design and development of web sites go muchsmoother.
You can now have a "template" for each page using the header andfooter directive, then simply add the content in between for each page.I guarantee that this little trick will save you hours and hours of tediouswork. As I stated at the beginning, if you've been through these "simple"edits before, you will need very little convincing! Article Tags: Text File, Each Page Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com .