How do I update all my webpages when I need to change the navigation?
There are a few methods depending on the stucture your website:
- Frames: Not a good idea. It actually doubles the maintenance effort required.
- External Javascript: Also not a good idea, relying on Javascript in this fashion is risky.
- CGI/PHP/ASP/JSP/servlet: A high overhead on a site where the content is quite static - but viable if the whole site is dynamically built.
- Server side includes: The second best solution for static content sites.
- HTML preprocessors:(such as Dorward: The Dolt2) The best technique for static sites - preprocessors add in naviagation menus, headers, and footers before the site gets uploaded - no performance overheads on the webserver.
- Text editor search and replace over multiple files: Normally the only practical way of doing so if none of the above are available. Editors like Textpad will allow a search and replace over multiple files loaded up. If you want to do the update over 200+ pages, then either Ultra-Edit, or a custom Perl-script is probably the way to go.