Introduction
Home-grown solutions
In the early days of the web, sites were usually built with primitive text editors, one page at a time, one painstaking HTML tag after another. Yeah, back then also we walked five miles to school, uphill both ways. And we liked it.
Current web building tools make it easier than ever for content managers to maintain a site's consistent look and feel -- every page with your logo at the top, a primary navigation bar in a prominent place, and a footer with your company's address and phone number, for example.
Introduction
Home-grown solutions
Not using a web authoring tool? Even if you're the programmer type with an unnatural affinity for Notepad you can use shared page elements. Essentially you'll create separate text files that contain the code for shared page elements, and then call upon these files as needed.
The most common way of doing this is with server-side includes (SSI). Create separate HTML files for each shared page element. For example, you might have an HTML file called "banner.htm" that's been saved in a directory called "includes".
I learned of SSI (Server Side Includes) long before I built my current site. Since it seemed the only way to go, I checked it out once again for the new site to be.
It was time - the design with it's origins in 1996 was looking very jaded. Some sections of the site were like dark, forgotten alleys... infrequently visited - cold and foreboding. It was time for a full web site upgrade!
If you have experienced or are experiencing this scenario now; you'll know the feeling. So much to do! Which way to go? What technology to use? Do we change the color scheme? What do we keep and what do we trash?