Loading a menu into your pages

[Jason]

I was just wondering hoW I could load one menu but into a table column if I made an external links page saved as .htm so I only need to change the one file to make all the pages menu's change without having to re-make every page, but so search engines can find each page as well.
Thanks!

[DaveyBoy]

PHP Includes :

<?php require("menu.htm"); ?>

[Jason]

My host can't take php includes, so how can I make one menu to show on every page, without frames?

[Jazzee]

*Merged these threads. Please keep all posts about the same issue in one thread.

[DaveyBoy]

Originally Posted by Jason

My host can't take php includes, so how can I make one menu to show on every page, without frames?

Well it's harder without any decent modules installed on the server...

If you have ASP, the code is :

<!--#include file="menu.htm"-->

Other than that, I dunno any other ways personally.

[Jason]

Jazzee - Sorry,
DaveyBoy- Thanks anyway

[imaginemn]

If SSI is supported by .htm files on your server try the following.

<!--#include virtual="/includes/menu.htm"-->

If it's not you can try renaming the .htm files to .shtml. The .shtml is the Server Side Include extension. But many servers are configured to allow .htm(l) files to use SSI include files.

If none of these work you could use a javascript file for the menu as a workaround but not ideal.

imaginemn

[DaveyBoy]

Originally Posted by Jason

Jazzee - Sorry,
DaveyBoy- Thanks anyway

No prob.

And don't apologise to Sara, she NEEDS TO CHILL OUTTTT!!!!

[dcristo]

I found this page http://www.freewebmasterhelp.com/tutorials/ssi to be a great help when learning SSI.

[assiah]

Use Dreamweaver and make a template file .dwt it's called.

Make a new clean .htm fil
Insert a table 1x3 - then insert a table 1x1 into that. Mark that 1x1 table up - and go to insert/template objects/editable region - then name it "Write here" for instance.

Save it as a template by going to "file/save as template" name it whatever you want.

Now, here's the smart part. Make the menus, graphics and whatever you want in the template .dwt file. (outside and around the "Write here" green thingie) Save it.

Then go to "new" - choose "template" and then "site: xxx" - and then the template you want to use.

Voila... you got a new .htm file which you can only edit in the "Write here" option you made before. the menu and surrounding stuff is locked. Put your text there. Remember, anything you put in this area only affects that one .htm file.

If you want to edit the menu or graphics laters, then you just open the .dwt file and edit that, then save it and it updates all the pages which belong to that specific template. then it's just to upload all the pages and it's done.

Got that? Yah, you did.
Enjoy,
Martin

[dcristo]

On a side note, what implications does SSI have on SEO, if any?

Also, if you were to use SSI to call upon three pages (nav bar, footer, adsense page) is this putting too much load on the server?

[dcristo]

Answered my own question, Aaron had this on his blog - http://www.seobook.com/archives/000216.shtml

[dcristo]

Some advice would be greatly appreciated... Im trying to implement SSI following Aaron's blog article above.

However, I run into problems when editing the .htaccess file. When I add the code to make the server parse htm files as shtml so I dont have to rename all my htm files, it creates a problem with my phpbb forum.

I have another .htaccess file located in my forum directory to do other things.

Creating the new .htaccess file in the root seems to be conflicting with the other file, causing my forum to be inaccessible (404 error)

Anyone encountered this problem?

[Jason]

Thanks everyone for your help regarding this topic, but I did need to apologise to Sara