Website Template And Dreamweaver

[flashram]

I have taken over hosting and upgrading a website for a church community centre website that I am doing for them at no cost to them. The website was originally designed by someone else and I am keeping the design, but it originally had a template attached to it, that I was unable to get hold of.

 

I have updated menu links and have had to change them on all the pages which is very time consuming. So I have done a template and would like some help with an idea I have regarding the information that is being displayed when each of the menu links is selected.

 

What I would like to happen is something like I have done in frames designed websites where the main frame is updated with information when a selection is made from the menu.

 

Problem I have is the graphics on the website really don't transcribe across to a frames designed website very well as it is currently desinged in tables and is a little complex (well to me it is, I'm still learning).

 

Why I want to do this, is so the graphics are loaded once and the info that changes is mostly text information. I want to do this to help out visitors to the website not having to load the images all the time a page changes. I know they images are cached once loaded, but there is still some lag in the page loads. It is alright for those with broadband access (cable, ADSL etc) but those with dialup will spend unnecessary time viewing the different information on the website. (I hope that all made sense).

 

I use Macromedia Studio, have Frontpage (don't like it), NoteTab Pro (great if you know HTML, although it is forgiving), etc etc etc.

 

The template is done, but I don't know how to get the links from the menu to display the information in the editable region of the page.

 

My assumption is, I create an index.html page based on the template which protects the layout and the only place that gets info in it is the editable region.

 

Or am I going about this all wrong.

 

At present there are about 8 links in the menu which may change over the comming weeks as modifications are done and reviewed by the office area, and that is why I want to base things on a template for the menu area so I only have to make one lot of changes, instead of having to make changes now on 8 pages, which is time consuming, and leads to coding errors.

 

Any help, advice, assistance would be greately appreciated. The website is currently live, although very few people know about it, due to information being very out of date. http://www.cofchristnc.org.au . And I'm not even a member of the congregation, but my kids go to some of the activities that they run, like a camp and that is why I am donating my hosting, and web creativity to them. It is all I can basically help them with, as my funds are very limited due to a back injury and not being able to do what I am really trained to do, which is working as a Nurse in an Operating Theatres.

 

And Bill (HeadGuru), thanks for the help and advice you gave me today. As always from one old fella to another old fella, much appreciated.

[TCH-Andy]

Hi Flashram,

 

If the site was created with dreamweaver and templates before, it is usally relatively easy to recreate the template from the existing pages. Take an existing page, open in dremweaver and save it as a template, with the same name as defined in the html for the template file.

 

Your assumption is correct about editable regions. These are the only areas you can change within Dreamweaver, although you can edit them in NotePad or similar of course.

 

I am on dialup, and the current menu works fine, so if that is the only graphics you are worrying about, then I would probably stick to using tables / CSS as it will be better indexed by the search engines than frames.

 

Andy

[borfast]

Hi Peter.

 

I tried the website with my dad's dial-up and it seems quite OK to me, so my first advice is that you shouldn't really worry about it, since the menu graphics aren't really big in size.

 

If you really want to do what you mentioned, here's a little old trick that might do what you want:

http://javascript.about.com/library/weekly...y/aa072301a.htm

 

It's not exactly what you want but I don't think you'll have any trouble adapting it to your needs. If you need help, just drop me a line

[flashram]

Thanks guys I will look tomorrow, getting late here in Sydney. Will get back and let you know. At present, after reading your comments, it might be fine to just leav things the way they are and apply the template to the main pages.

[Head Guru]

Pete -

 

Ordering me hat !!!!!

 

Naughty Naughty Naughty Naughty Naughty