Need advice on separating content from look and feel

[Guest]

Hi,

I am thinking about designing a website using HTML/ASP.NET. I am expecting
that the website will have about 50-100 pages. I am planning on using SSI to
separate the sections of the pages such as header and footer. I will have
navigational menus placed on the page horizontally and vertically. I was
wondering if anyone has any suggestions as how to code menus so that
adding/deleting a menu item won’t mean changing each and every page of the
site. Ideally I would like to keep the menus in one file and so that if I
ever have to change anything, I will make changes to one file. Let me know f
you know of any articles also.

Thanks in advance,

Joe

 

[John Timney \(ASP.NET MVP\)]

Dont use SSI, read up on User Controls instead - and code it one as a menu
tor ead from an xml file which can be cached using fragment caching.

Also, you could look up the concept of master pages to control your look and
feel.

--
Regards

John Timney
ASP.NET MVP
Microsoft Regional Director

 

[darrel]

I was

wondering if anyone has any suggestions as how to code menus so that
adding/deleting a menu item won't mean changing each and every page of the
site.

This, along with SSIs are usually reserved for static web sites. In your
case, you're using ASP.net, so you can build all sorts of logic to
dynamically display the menu on each page.

For your menu, you'd probably want to make it a usercontrol. Then, you'd
want to pass the usercontrol some sort of property...probably the page you
are currently on.

Then, you'd have the control render out each menu item. For the item that
matches the page you are on, you'd have it render in a different style.

This way, if you need to modify your menu, you just need to modify this one
usercontrol file.

-Darrel

 

[Guest]

Being new to asp.net world, all your recomendations seems complex and hard to
implement. Are there any articles or tutorials that will show me how to do
it. Or are there any simplemethods such as SSI.

Joe

 

[darrel]

Being new to asp.net world, all your recomendations seems complex and hard
to

implement. Are there any articles or tutorials that will show me how to do
it. Or are there any simplemethods such as SSI.

You really need to understand Usercontrols, as they're a basic building
block in ASP.net. There are a ton of tutorials on them, though. Google
returns several:

http://www.google.com/search?q=using+asp.net+usercontrols

-Darrel