Making all pages repeat the design of the home page

[DennisK]

Hi all,
I am a newbie, pease be gentle
I have created a new website ( http://www.toysofamerica.com )
As you can see the top of each webpage is the same.
There is a company logo, then a set of tabs which link to the other pages in the site. (BTW if I am using the wrong terminology please let me know)
These tabs are also repeted at the bottom of the page.
Now, if I add a new page to the site I have to edit the index page and then copy the logo and the tabs and paste then onto each page on the website. I have to also repeat this for the bottom tabs.
Is there anyway that I can get all the other page in the website to simply repeat what ever adjustments I make to the index page?
Many thanks for any help

[moojoo]

Just copy the page, paste the code into the new page and change what you need. That would be the most common scenario.

[DennisK]

sadly that would mean i would have to copy and paste 40 times for the whole site. That takes a lot of time thats why i want to see if i can automate

[camcool21]

I'm kinda new also, but wouldn't external style sheets uploaded up onto each page work, That wouldn't really solve your 40 page problem tho I believe this problem can be solved using CSS

[ukgeoff]

This is exactly why you set-up a template system with common page parts held in their own files and loaded into each page using some 'include' method.

That way each new page you create is based on the template which already has the code to include the respective files and you just add the page specific content.

There is a Template tutorial available from the sticky at the top of the css forum. Suggest you download and work through that. It willl explain this and a lot more.

[DennisK]

Hi all
Many thanks for the replies.
Sadly I have just been reading SEO on google and google does not like the use of style sheets
Anyone have any views on this fact?

[moojoo]

Um.. what? Pages that sep design and content using semantic markup and css yield far better search engine placement usually.

[ukgeoff]

Don't know who wrote the piece about Google not liking style sheets but that is utter rubbish.

[moojoo]

Probably some Frontpage user who loves frames, <blink> tags and tables hehe.

Originally Posted by ukgeoff

Don't know who wrote the piece about Google not liking style sheets but that is utter rubbish.

[DennisK]

The detail regarding google not liking style sheets is on googles own SEO help file!!!

[Ryan Fait]

Link please.

[Daniel]

ive scoured the google website and cant find this statement :/

[moojoo]

If it is there it is possible that it is old information from perhaps CSS 1 days. Ya know during the transition.

[DennisK]

Hi all
Sorry, I went through my history to find the reference to this data, but could not find it ( i did tons of searches on that day )

But I can assure you it said Google does not like CSS. It maybe that some people have found a way of using it to create spam.

[Daniel]

you cant use css to make spam its a style sheet!!! only works with html!!

[daygon]

Originally Posted by moojoo

Probably some Frontpage user who loves frames, <blink> tags and tables hehe.

Oh god! The unforgetable blink tag that will give you ceasures and start the foaming of the mouth. All that aside though, I really dont care what the SEO says just do it to make your life easier. CSS all you would have to do is link the stylesheet and put all the divs in the right placedo that first before inputting any info and and you can save it as oh say temp.htm and whenever you have to make a new page just open that temp.htm and right when you open it save it as pagename.htm and then put all your info in.

[moojoo]

Since the site was never developed with this kind of functionality in mind yeah I would say he is SOL and is going to have to just do the work. In the future plan for such things. Personally I usually make one index.html and recycle that code for corresponding pages making modifications as required. And of course using PHP includes never hurts either for footers or any other content that is globally used and may be changed at a later date.

[daygon]

Originally Posted by moojoo

Since the site was never developed with this kind of functionality in mind yeah I would say he is SOL and is going to have to just do the work. In the future plan for such things. Personally I usually make one index.html and recycle that code for corresponding pages making modifications as required. And of course using PHP includes never hurts either for footers or any other content that is globally used and may be changed at a later date.

Usually i start off with two pages, I make my index.htm and then i make a temp.htm for all my little subpages with the same structure and everything that way all you have to do is open it and do a save as and then start doing the work and save occasionally. That seems to work for me. That way everything stays organized and i dont have to worry about moving divs around for everypage to make it look the same.

[moojoo]

Yup, save as.. and get to it.

[craig]

wow, this thread astounded me....

heres some information from google...

http://www.google.com/support/webmas...y?answer=35769