had an idea....

date posted 11th July 2001 11:13

I've been building a site with quite a lot of content and a rather large
menu system.

Making all this easy to navigate is fine using frames: ie just one
menu.html file to edit as changes come about in the navigation. However I
want this site to get up the ranks in the search engines as quickly as
possible so I am considering building it without frames. It would also make
it easier to link into from other sites.

To make this practical, the menu system would still have to be centrally
edited in order to be practical (ie without having to edit every page in
the site). I could do it using dreamweaver templates very easily, but this
would mean having to upload the whole site everytime the menu changed. This
isn't a great idea as we are talking 50+ pages in different directories.

I was wondering then about different methods of inclusion.... SSIs could be
an idea : but then how do you test the site without a local server?
External DHMTL / JS files : ye-es, could be pull down menu-tastic but this
client couldn't pay for that sort of development (unless anyone has a quick
n dirty plug n play solution, I know theres a lot of them about : they
just generally look horrible.).

oh yeah..... www.boardnldoge.com ....

frame-tastic and quarter of a menu there at the moment, loads more as they
heat up for next season.

cheers in advance.
H