Does your web site have repetitive headers or footers on multiple pages, such as navigation images or text? Do you dread making changes because of all the work you’ll have to do updating all those pages? The FrontPage Include Bot is your answer!
The Include Bot allows you
to include the contents of one page within another. For
instance, if you have navigational links or a logo at the top
of each page, you can instead tell those pages to
"include" the contents of a separate page (let's
call it the "Source"), which actually contains the
links or logo. Any time you update the Source page, all the
pages that "include" it will reflect the changes;
seamlessly! I use this on clients’ pages and it is an
incredible timesaver, as well as a great way of ensuring
consistency among your site’s pages.
How It's Done
Create the Source
In the Front
Page Editor, create a page which will be used as the Source.
On this page, you might place text or image hyperlinks
typical in many web sites such as About
| Links | Contact . The content can really be anything. Don’t
worry or bother about background colors or graphics, since
the Source will inherit those properties from whatever page
it’s included in.
Tell Your Pages to
"Include" the Source
Save the
Source and open your "Target" page in the Front
Page Editor. This is one of the pages you want the Source to
appear within. Position the cursor where you want the
included Source to appear and select Insert | WebBot
Component…, and then select "Include" from the dropdown list of available
components. You are presented with a dialog box where you can
enter the URL of the Source or browse for it (I'd recommend
browsing to avoid typos). Find your Source file, click OK to
return it to the dialog box and click OK again. Voila! The
contents of the Source file now appear in your Target page.
You can use the Include anywhere; at the top, bottom or within a Target page, making it very flexible. Any time you update the Source, all pages referring to it are updated as well.
Potential"Gotcha's"
The Include Source
page must be within the web.
You cannot
include, say, another web site’s page within your own
using the Include Bot. If this is what you need, then you may
want to try using Frames.
The Include Bot uses Relative URL’s
If your Target
pages are stored in different directories within the web AND
your Source Page has image links, some pages will display
broken links to the images. To get around this, edit the HTML
of your Source so that the links point to the full URL’s
of the images, such as:
<img
src="http://www.mydomain.com/images/MyImage.jpg"
width="100" height="75">
The
"Target" page's settings prevail.
Again, page
settings within the Source, such as background colors,
background images and hyperlink colors will be overridden by
the setting of the Target page. This is great for
consistency.
Remember to
"Refresh"!
When you
change a Source’s content (say, add another hyperlink)
and then go to see it in a Target, you’ll most likely
have to Refresh the page. If you have problems seeing the
changes, go to the Front Page Explorer and select
Tools | Recalculate Hyperlinks.
Have fun!
Author: Frank J. Mazzella
Date: 09/23/97
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