SSI for Navigation

[Jay]

The owner of one of the website I manage likes to make periodic changes to
the navigation menu which is on about 250 pages.

Would it be better for us to use SSI for the navigation instead so the
updates can be done to one page instead of 250?
Would there be any problems we should expect by doing so?

We're using a Windows IIS6.0 server.

Thanks!

--
"Some see the glass as half-empty;
some see the glass as half-full.
I see the glass as too big." - George Carlin

- J

 

[David Dorward]

The owner of one of the website I manage likes to make periodic changes to
the navigation menu which is on about 250 pages.

Would it be better for us to use SSI for the navigation instead so the
updates can be done to one page instead of 250?

Instead of what? SSI would be a good solution, my preference would be
towards a proprocessor that generated static files (since that reduces
server load and makes cache handling easier).

 

[Jay]

Instead of what?

Instead of having the navigation statically on each page.

--
"Some see the glass as half-empty;
some see the glass as half-full.
I see the glass as too big." - George Carlin

- J

 

[Karl Groves]

The owner of one of the website I manage likes to make periodic changes to
the navigation menu which is on about 250 pages.

Tell him to decide on an information architecture and navigation design and
stop fucking with the users.

-Karl

 

[Tina - AffordableHOST.com]

The owner of one of the website I manage likes to make periodic changes to
the navigation menu which is on about 250 pages.

Would it be better for us to use SSI for the navigation instead so the
updates can be done to one page instead of 250?
Would there be any problems we should expect by doing so?

We're using a Windows IIS6.0 server.

Thanks!

Yes, SSI would make your life alot easier. ;-)

See: bignosebird.com/ssi.shtml for details.

--Tina

 

[Rafal 'Raf256' Maj]

(e-mail address removed)

Would it be better for us to use SSI for the navigation instead so the
updates can be done to one page instead of 250?

Yes, but IMHO PHP could be even better.

 

[Jukka K. Korpela]

The owner of one of the website I manage likes to make periodic
changes to the navigation menu which is on about 250 pages.

Tell her or him that navigation menus should not be changed, especially
not periodically. Some basic guidance on usability would be in order.

If this does not work, and you are starving, then tell a white lie:
it costs quite a lot to do the periodic pages. (Actually, it's not even a
lie. It surely costs in terms of reduced usability.)

Would it be better for us to use SSI for the navigation instead so
the updates can be done to one page instead of 250?

No. Anything that makes it easier to do the wrong thing cannot be right.

 

[brucie]

in post: <

Would it be better for us to use SSI for the navigation

back in the old days servers didn't have many goodies and if you wanted
them you had to pay more, even for giggly little SSIs.

thats no longer the case these days, servers are so optioned up you can
even select the style of taps you want on the kitchen sink they throw in
for free.

SSIs were great in their day but with so many options available its now
over and about 8:43:26pm, 15 minutes into the nightly adult movie and
you've already seen some boobies.

while SSIs are a solution they're not the best solution. eventually
you'll want more functionality than SSIs can provide. i recommend using
your favorite server side language now rather than making do with SSIs
and then in the future having a lot of work to do to change over to a
SSL.

 

[Will]

The owner of one of the website I manage likes to make periodic changes to
the navigation menu which is on about 250 pages.

Would it be better for us to use SSI for the navigation instead so the
updates can be done to one page instead of 250?
Would there be any problems we should expect by doing so?

We're using a Windows IIS6.0 server.

Thanks!

I'm not the wiz these guys are but I will tell you how I did it. I had
the same issue of not wanting to update the navigation on each page. I
created a seperate page with all the navigation html code on it and
called it menu.php. Then in my html replaced all of the navigation with
<?php include("menu.php"); ?> . This assumes you have php on your
server of course. It works great for me. I update one file and all the
pages use it.