Mark E. Buckley

Designing Frequently Changing Pages

You may have a page on your site that changes frequently. Perhaps a Calendar, List of Classes, Employee Directory or another similar listing. The challenge is to keep these pages current without an undue amount of work.

Ideally you will have an FTP program so that you can upload your updated file to your remote web site. This could be an HTML editor such as Front Page or Dreamweaver. There are other stand alone FTP programs.

If you do not utilze FTP, then you will have to go to your hosting companies site and upload the new file. Most hosting packages allow you access to a file manager or similar resource.

If you do not really know HTML, how can you make it easier to upload your data? Several strategies are possible.

One option is to keep your page in CSS. These pages are easier to read and update.

Another option is to insert HTML comments where your data is. Then simply use Find to get to that area and correct the information.

Another option would be to include a separate file that contained the data. A separate text file could be included in your page with an object tag.

Another way to include a separate file would be with a SSI - Server Side Include. In this case your web pages would end with shtml instead of html.

A more sophisticated option would be to create your page with a Server Side Script such as PHP, ASP, or CFM. Then you would simply include an 'include' function to display the flat, i.e. text, file.

The most complex, but most powerful, option would be to create a data driven page. The page would be written in PHP or ASP and would bind to a data base. You would also create a form page that would allow you to update the database as your data changed. The visitor would see the most recent queried data.