menu sidebar... separate code? Options

[Locry]

hello... i'm fairly new with web design... so i don't really know some of the terms yet, so please bear with me.

my site is http://www.milsimxgames.com

my dillema is this: the center portion of the page is the content area... the left side is the menu of sorts...while the right side is the "team" boards...

now throughout most of the pages the left and right sides remain constant in terms of their "contents/(elements?)"...
everytime i wish to add to an element to the left or right side i find myself having to edit all the pages just so the left and right menus stay consistent.

is there a way to reference "outside" the pages so that i only have to edit one file/code?

the page uses a downloaded template... i just modified the graphics and such... i know it uses a css file (slowly getting the hang of it )...

how do i go about referencing the file if ever?

thanks.

[pandy]

Yes, but it must be done on the server (or before you upload the files). It can't be done with HTML. SSI is available on most servers and a nobraianer to use for this. Take a look at it.
http://htmlhelp.com/faq/html/design.html#include-file

[Locry]

wow, thanks for the quick reply. will check it out. thanks!

[Locry]

hehehehe... i'm lost... i think i should just edit all the pages manually. brute-force. is this how some sites do it? brute-force i mean...

[Darin McGrew]

I set up an HTML preprocessor for my personal site when it expanded past a couple pages. It isn't that hard.

[Locry]

i'd have to look into this... i really am clueless at this point... i had programming experience with C and basic waaaaaaaay back, i'm familiar with functions and procedures... i just thought html would have a simple equivalent. ... if i don't get it i'll just limit my pages. do a lot of cutting/pasting haha

[pandy]

Come on... What don't you understand? Simply put SSI is a server mechanism that can replace "special tags" with something else. In your case that would be the content of a file.

Let's say you cut all the HTML for your menu out and put it in a file called menu.txt. Where the menu used to be you put the below SSS directive.

CODE

<!--#include virtual="/menu.txt" -->

When you go to the page with a browser the server will by pure magic replace the SSI directive with the content of menu.txt before it sends the page to the browser and the two are one again.

Now, does that sound like it's very hard to do?

[Alex McP]

Come on... What don't you understand? Simply put SSI is a server mechanism that can replace "special tags" with something else. In your case that would be the content of a file.

Let's say you cut all the HTML for your menu out and put it in a file called menu.txt. Where the menu used to be you put the below SSS directive.

CODE

<!--#include virtual="/menu.txt" -->

When you go to the page with a browser the server will by pure magic replace the SSI directive with the content of menu.txt before it sends the page to the browser and the two are one again.

Now, does that sound like it's very hard to do?

I'll vouch for the ease of use: I asked this same question about a week ago, and now I'm up and running.

The operation is a "server side include". To do it I learned a bit (~30 minutes of reading) about PHP and spent 20 minutes in a text editor with my pages. It works great now, and already I've edited the "menu" file twice. It took 2 minutes each time, whereas before it would have taken me an hour to update each and every page.

It's worth the "hassle"!

[Dr Z]

I set up an HTML preprocessor for my personal site when it expanded past a couple pages. It isn't that hard.

Darin,
Could you possible elaborate on the issue of HTML preprocessor?

[Darin McGrew]

Could you possible elaborate on the issue of HTML preprocessor?

As the FAQ explains: "A preprocessor converts its source into a plain HTML document that you publish on your server. In contrast, documents that use server-side inclusion are processed every time the document is retrieved from the server."

We also have Links to HTML Preprocessors. I use HTMLPP (iMatix) for my personal site, but there are plenty to choose from.

[Locry]

Come on... What don't you understand? Simply put SSI is a server mechanism that can replace "special tags" with something else. In your case that would be the content of a file.

Let's say you cut all the HTML for your menu out and put it in a file called menu.txt. Where the menu used to be you put the below SSS directive.

CODE

<!--#include virtual="/menu.txt" -->

When you go to the page with a browser the server will by pure magic replace the SSI directive with the content of menu.txt before it sends the page to the browser and the two are one again.

Now, does that sound like it's very hard to do?

wow! if you put it that way... it seems easy enough! thanks! i think that's exactly what i'm after.

so everything that is in the ".txt" file gets superimposed on the html file? including all the links and css pointers?

[Locry]

ok... so i included the directive... but nothing's happening... should i be doing something with the server? what in particular? sorry guys... i'm lost

update:

i read about ssi and shtml and that it has to be installed somehow... the problem is, i think i'm sharing space with other sites... (i'm new to this)... because when i access my control panel i see a bunch of other domains and their respective directories. i don't want to mess things up by inadvertently doing something that will affect the other sites... does installing something under my domain also affect the others? i'm just playing it safe at the moment. I do realize SSI is what i need... how do i go about installing it and where? thanks guys

This post has been edited by Locry: Jan 31 2008, 07:23 PM

[pandy]

wow! if you put it that way... it seems easy enough!

I thought you would think so.

so everything that is in the ".txt" file gets superimposed on the html file? including all the links and css pointers?

Yes. It doesn't matter where you cut (from this point of view). Think of it as cutting out a hole in a paper and then putting the piece you cut out back again with tape. It doesn't matter if you cut in the middle of a word or tag, but that may be stupid for other reasons. When you view source of a page with includes, you see no trace of them. There's just normal HTML.

ok... so i included the directive... but nothing's happening... should i be doing something with the server?

Yes, you should. I left that bit out. Wanted to get you hooked first.

First, SSI must be available. If you have a paid account it's rare it isn't. Second, the server must know which files to parse for SSI. Typically it parses all files with the extension .shtml. So you can try that to start with and see if something happens.

It can be impractical to rename all files, so there are ways to make the server parse .html files for SSI. If you are on Apache there are several ways. One is to add the below to an .htaccess file. But see if you can get it to work with the shtml extension first.

CODE

AddHandler server-parsed .html

[Locry]

thank you so much bro! i'll try changing the html extension to shtml and see what happens.

update: ok, so i included this line: <include virtual="/menu.txt">
where the menu.txt file is at the same level as the index.shtml... nothing happens... at least the code isn't "visible"... i guess it just doesn't see the .txt file?

This post has been edited by Locry: Feb 2 2008, 05:12 AM

[pandy]

The slash means the URL is relative to the document root. If you remove the slash it becomes relative the current document.

[Christian J]

<!--include virtual="/menu.txt"--> lacks the "#".

But the URL seems correct, since both files are in the web root.

[pandy]

Darn, I didn't see that. Where is the .shtml file then?

[pandy]

Oh. It's the index file.

You should also have a space before the closing '--'.

Not so

CODE

<!--include virtual="/menu.txt"-->

but so

CODE

<!--#include virtual="/menu.txt" -->

[Christian J]

Actually, before you start changing all your file names to .shtml, consider using PHP includes instead of SSI (if your web host supports it). PHP includes work the same way as in SSI (syntax is slightly different):

CODE

<?php include '/menu.txt'; ?>

but PHP is far more powerful than SSI, something that you'll appreciate sooner or later. Just like SSI you can configure PHP to use any file extension you like, so you don't have to use .php.

The PHP manual is very good: http://php.net/

[pandy]

Hey, it's one step at the time here. Besides, if you don't change the file names it doesn't matter what you use to start with.