One menu for all pages

I have a business website, with all static html pages. There is a menu on all the pages.
Now, I want to add an extra element in the menu, but it's really painful, to change each and every page that contains the menu.
Can anyone please provide a solution to this kind of problem.
Thanks.

 

Fortunately you have a few options available to you. If your server supports server-side includes, you can write an include file (it's a simple text file) and then insert it into your Web pages via an include command.

If your server has a server-side programming language like ASP or PHP installed and properly configured, you can use that as well.

What's your server currently running?

 

My server supports server-side inlcudes as well as PHP. Can you please give me an example of how to do it. Thanks.

 

Sure can.

For server-side includes, (after creating your separate file), put this into your Web page:

<!--#include virtual="/path/to/filename.ext"-->

Code (markup):

where /path/to/filename.ext is the path to your included file (such as menu.html) relative to the document root (the folder where your Web pages go, usually public_html or www) and .ext is the extension of the file (.html for example). I personally prefer to put all my include files into a single folder, directly below the root (again, usually public_html or www), called includes.

For example, the path would be /includes/menu.html

You would then save the Web page as a .shtml file (or configure Apache to parse .html as .shtml files so you can just keep the .html extension, but I'm not comfortable enough with Apache to do this).

As for PHP, create your included file as normal, then follow the same instructions above, but use this code instead:

<?php include("filename.inc.php"); ?>

Code (markup):

Of course, if you're using multiple folders, you'll have a problem referencing your includes, even if you put them into a separate includes folder.

For that, I usually do this (even though I should know better):

<?php include($DOCUMENT_ROOT . "/includes/filename.inc.php"); ?>

Code (markup):

Notice how in each case I declared the file extension to be .inc.php ? That's because the .inc is to remind me that it's an include page, and the .php is to force the server to parse it before sending it to the browser. If you have any sensitive data (like database login information) this becomes critical, since any schmuck could go to yoursite.com/includes/filename.inc (let's just say that filename.inc is database.inc for a second) and get the database login information if you don't put .php at the very end.

And of course, rather than saving your Web page (with the include statements) as .html, you would save them as .php unless you configured the server to treat .html files the same as .php files.

Hope that helps. If you need more, just ask me.

 

I would agree with Dan on this one, you have to make sure it is still organized.

 

Or you could find a search and replace program and do this:

Search for:
<A HREF="last menu item">Link</A>

Replace with:
<A HREF="last menu item">Link</A><br>
<A HREF="new menu item">New Link</A>

There are many search & replace programs that will run through entire folders in seconds.

 

Thanks a tonne for your help Dan!
Probably this will solve my problem!
Thanks once again, and,
rep+ from my me

 

Yup. Organization is the key. Something that should be done before any Web design/re-design/development/re-development project even gets under way.

Another thing, if your pages are saved using .html extensions yet you switch to another file type, be sure to do a 301 redirect on your pages so that the links are not broken. Not only will this help your human visitors (who may think your site is broken if you don't), but it will also help the search engines find your "new" pages.

I'll let you take your pick of the Google search results for 301 redirect tutorials, since I don't know what your reading style is like:
http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=301+redirect&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

 

Dan Schulz (or other web gurus),

Is there anyway I can put absolute URL in the SSI include? I've tried something like <#include virtual = "http://www.bla.net/nav-files/footer.htm" --> but it does not work.

Would have been easier if it does since getting relative URLs from different subfolders can be cumbersome.

 

You'll have to change virtual to file if you want to do that.

But frankly I don't see why you would even want to specify an absolute URL like that anyway.

 

Oh really? Thanks!

Main reason: I want to have only one header.htm file from which ALL pages from different folders will point to the absolute URL of the header.htm

With #include virtual, I have to change the relative paths in different (sub)folders, eg:

folder#1 - "include virtual ="nav/header.htm"
L_subfolder#1.1 - "include virtual ="../nav/header.htm"
L__subfolder#1.1.1 - - "include virtual ="../../nav/header.htm"

It goes a bit ugly when the number of shtml pages grow and grow.

 

So why not reference it this way?

/includes/included-file.html

 

Where do I put it? In .htaccess file? Can you be more specific by way of an example? I put all my navigation files (header.htm, sidebar.htm, footer.htm) in a folder called "nav"

 

Nav, includes, doesn't matter, really. It's just a folder, afterall.

 

I mean "/includes/included-file.html" will only work with .shtml files in the directory immediately higher up from folder "includes". But for subfolders, putting "/includes/included-file.html" means the .shtml cannot find the "includes" folder.

 

This method would be a huge pain. You would need to do the find and replace every time you want to change a sitewide element. You also need to publish every file when you do this. This could make a 20 second change take 10 minutes or longer on a large site.

You would also run into problems with relative links. If you have an element that is used in different folders some links may have ../linkpath.html others may have /linkpath.html as opposed to linkpath.html. This would cause your find and replace to miss a lot of the instances. You could get around this with complex regex searches but that would take much longer.

 

if you don't want to rename your webpages as .shtml you can change your .htaccess file to look like this:

Options Includes
AddType text/html .html
AddHandler server-parsed .html
AddHandler server-parsed .htm


and then just use something like:

<!--#include file="topnavigation.html" -->

I've used this method on dozens of sites, works fine unless in rare case of certain server configurations but works maybe on 9 out of 10 unix/linux servers I've tried.

Let me know if it works for you.

 

I appreciate the your help guys.
The problem is now solved. (Check the age of this thread.)

 

I forgot to mention using .htaccess in this manner when I wrote my post on this thread. Sorry about that.

 

Thanks for remembering.
Rep+ to you and all who posted in this thread.