Updated site would appreciate comments - WAS Going to update my website

Kerioak

Kerioak

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Name
Christine
Edit My Images
Yes
I have decided to update my website a little, will probably keep the same colour scheme but lose the header and lose/edit some of the galleries.

I know there must be a way if I edit the left hand pane for it to be the same throughout the site without having to edit every page but is there a simple (ie simple for me to understand) without having to edit every page

Helpful comments before I start would be much appreciated. I am not a web designer and learn as I go along so please use simple language.
 
Kerioak said:
I know there must be a way if I edit the left hand pane for it to be the same throughout the site without having to edit every page but is there a simple (ie simple for me to understand) without having to edit every page
Click to expand...

Are you going to be using Dreamweaver? If so you could do something with templates.

If (like me) you can't afford Dreamweaver the next best thing is using PHP Includes, you do the coding for the left column and save it as a php file, say leftcolumn.php, then whenever you want to include that code you type <?php include("leftcolumn.php"); ?>.

For this to work you will need php enabled on your server and instead of using the .html extension you will need to use .php.
 
CSS is what will let you make one change to many pages but after a quick look it seems that each page has it's own CSS rather than linking to an external file so you'll still need to edit each page I'm afraid.

But all might not be lost. I suspect all the pages use the same CSS so you might be able to copy and paste it from one of the pages and then replace the CSS in every page with a link to an external style sheet. Once you've done that then you could change once for all the pages.

The menu itself also appears to be on every page, there are a few ways around that. One would be to load the content using an IFRAME or using Server Side Includes which really does the same thing in a different way. Other options would involve more work and a lot more learning.

If your host supports php and MySQL I would seriously consider moving to wordpress, it's a lot more than a blog and is very easy to use and maintain. You'd still need to do some work on customising a theme if you didn't find a ready made one you were happy with but if you can do a bit of CSS then it's pretty straightforward (y)
 
Thank you all for your comments.

Slapo - I have tried to do this but cannot work it out - sounds simple but isn't :) (for me anyway)

Craikybaby - yes I use Dreamweaver and think I set it up originally with a template - and then probably botched it

Pxl8 - my host does support php and MySQL but not on the package I have for my photography domain. I do have MySQL on another of my domains - is it possible to use that one with my Kerioak site do you think or would I have to upgrade?

I use IFrame for something else on my site - that is a brilliant idea and I will see if I can make it work, thank you. I am not sure how to create a link to an external style sheet but it might be worth having a go at it, but have no idea how to link it back to make it work.
 
It might be possible to use the MySQL database, it depends how it's named. Often it's just localhost in which case it won't work unless it's the same host. But if you can get the name of the machine such as sqlserver.somehost.com then it might work - depends on how the permissions are setup, the server might only allow connections from hosts lan.

If you iFrame watch for out for links as they need to refer to the parent page in order to work.

Oh, one other thing - make the text in the menu have a link to # - it won't do anything but the pointer will change an an arrow rather than the text selector when the mouse is over them (y)

edit: info on using external style sheets here: http://www.pageresource.com/dhtml/csstut5.htm
 
If you have Dreamweaver I'd go down the template route, get a page and delete anything off that could change on a page on your site, then insert the editable areas (I always miss the ones between the <head> tags, so watch out for those). Then you can add the unique parts to each page, if you want to edit the template it happens on each page.

(Guess you may know that, but anyone else with the same question might not ;) )
 
Yes, wordpress is blog software, I know a few people on here have used it as a content management system, but looking at your site it is probably overkill, you probably just need to tweak what you already have in Dreamweaver rather than starting from scratch...
 
You have to get Wordpress away from the blogging side and turn it into a site.

The first thing you need to do is turn off the home page being a blog.

Go to pages > Add New and create a new page, call it Welcome or something.
Make another new page and call it News

Next go to the admin panel, settings, reading and change Front Page Displays > Static Page and select the Welcome page you just made. For the Posts page select the News page.

At this point Wordpress behaves like a normal website with static pages and the "blog" is an extra feature.

You can add more pages, one for prices, weddings, etc, etc. and when you create them you can set the order they'll appear in the menu, give them parent pages, etc (bottom right of the edit page screen).

For your gallery you could just add a link or edit the source code of the sidebar or whichever layer you want the link to appear in and add it directly.

Start with simple things and you'll quickly pick it up as you go along, but catch me on Skype tomorrow and I can go through it all in a bit more detail (y)
 
Hi Craikeybaby - thanks for your comments, probably means my site is not too bad at the moment but I do want a change and to be able to add some new pages and features without having to edit every page as I do at present (coding and design is not my strong point).

Thanks Andy - I have done as you suggested but unfortunately the design I have chosen only has the windows on one page and I want them on every page so am trying a few experiments which I think will probably explode if I don't first :D
 
Just a small one, but it's worth keeping everything left orientated..especially navigation menus :)
 
Thanks, I had found that and it seems to work.

What I think I want to do is just pick out and incorporate the design as like that but there is a lot of extra junk that appears on the pages (times of comments, comments on no comments etc etc) that I just cannot see the point of. However I am still working at it and WILL get a revised site eventually.
 
Following Pxl8's recommendation on using Wordpress, I have, with an extremely steep learning curve (and some help from Pxl8 for which I am extremely grateful although it was all his fault anyway for suggesting something I had never heard of :D ) almost finished creating a new website. If anyone would check it out and comment I would appreciate it it

Previous site


New Site
 
Well as I am a total plonker with web site disign, I was looking at it purely as a user. I would say thats pretty damned good!
everything is where I woud expect to find it and no navigation issues that I can see, (IE 7)
Nice one Christine :clap:
 
KayJay said:
Judging from the pm I received from you I've somehow offended you by offering advice. I'll remember that.

I can't be anymore helpful unless I build your site for you, in which case you'll need to pay me. :D
Click to expand...

I must admit I was a bit taken aback by your reply = all I wanted to know was how to make the first page anyone entered the home page not the blog page :)

Following your previous advice I had backed up everything on the ftp'able part of the server and deleted the MySql part as that means little to me, just found that everytime I moved anything I had to start again by reloading it to get it working.

Then today I started again from scratch with what I think might be everything in the right place to get rid of "wordpress" appearing in every address. At least I know know where the root is - and it is not where I would have thought.

No, I don't think I will pay for it having got this far, will just keep fiddling to get that last niggle right :D
 
In case anyone else needs to know with Wordpress you can set the site to either show the latest posts or a static page by default. You change this by going to the

Admin page > Settings > Reading

and you'll see the options for what WP should display as the home page, if you select a page you can also create a new blank page called News or Blog or Whatever and set that as the page that will be used for displaying posts. Don't bother putting any content in the page when you create it as WP will ignore it.

In WP posts are blog entries and pages are static content, like normal pages on a site. By setting it to use a page as the home you can effectively turn off the blogging side completely and just use it as a website but still take advantage of the plugins, ease of use, etc (y)
 
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