upping the ante on my website

[theyarerising]

At the moment, my website is just plain old html (with a css doc and a little bit of stolen/borrowed javascript) I like it the way it is, but I want to make it bigger and better an pretty much do more.
It's only been up for a few days, but I keep having ideas that I want to add to. The first thing I want to do is have it allow people people register/sign in and submit things, articles etc.

So my question really is, how do I do that? Is it CGI or PHP or ASP or Perl or are some of them the same thing?

Also right now each page of the site is separate witht he same content repeated for the general layout which is a bit of a pain because when I change things or add pages, I have to make the changes on every page I've already made. So is there a way for me to code the layout once and have it repeated on all the pages without using html frames?

Any help/advice would be appreciated,

thanks!

[Zero]

Look into Wordpress and Drupal. You shouldn't need to do any programming.

[DoNotResus]

Originally Posted by theyarerising

At the moment, my website is just plain old html (with a css doc and a little bit of stolen/borrowed javascript) I like it the way it is, but I want to make it bigger and better an pretty much do more.
It's only been up for a few days, but I keep having ideas that I want to add to. The first thing I want to do is have it allow people people register/sign in and submit things, articles etc.

So my question really is, how do I do that? Is it CGI or PHP or ASP or Perl or are some of them the same thing?

Also right now each page of the site is separate witht he same content repeated for the general layout which is a bit of a pain because when I change things or add pages, I have to make the changes on every page I've already made. So is there a way for me to code the layout once and have it repeated on all the pages without using html frames?

Any help/advice would be appreciated,

thanks!

I think for the last part you should have a wee look at Cascading Style Sheets, they are dead easy and there's a few tutorials online. Basically seperates content from styling an dmakes it easy to change the look of your page.

My wee site that I update everynow and then at http://personal.strath.ac.uk/david.hughes/ uses three of them which you can change between in the drop down list at the top.

[theyarerising]

Thanks a bunch!

Drupal looks like it does a little bit more, so I'll give it a go

Originally Posted by DoNotResus

I think for the last part you should have a wee look at Cascading Style Sheets, they are dead easy and there's a few tutorials online. Basically seperates content from styling an dmakes it easy to change the look of your page.

I've already used css to some extent. But I couldn't find any way to include the header image and navigation buttons and the footer without including them in each html file. is there a way to do that? My css knowledge is patchy at best since I got it all from google.

[DoNotResus]

Originally Posted by theyarerising

Thanks a bunch!

Drupal looks like it does a little bit more, so I'll give it a go



I've already used css to some extent. But I couldn't find any way to include the header image and navigation buttons and the footer without including them in each html file. is there a way to do that? My css knowledge is patchy at best since I got it all from google.

Erm, for the header image I suppose you could set a DIV frame's background image to be the header image. As for active buttons, I don't know.

[Zero]

No, you'd need to use server-side processing for that.

[DoNotResus]

If your server uses PHP it would be a simple case of adding a <?php include("menubuttons.htm") ?> line to where you want the buttons to be, with the menubuttons.htm file only containing your button HTML code that you duplicate at the moment.

[theyarerising]

Originally Posted by DoNotResus

Erm, for the header image I suppose you could set a DIV frame's background image to be the header image.

D'oh. I am le muppet!

[Largest of Gregs]

find out what server side scripting you can run on your websites. using server side includes allow you insert a single file into many web pages alowing you to just make changes to the include.

Create your normal page, then create the menu in another file and include the menu file into your page

[theyarerising]

Originally Posted by Largest of Gregs

find out what server side scripting you can run on your websites. using server side includes allow you insert a single file into many web pages alowing you to just make changes to the include.

Create your normal page, then create the menu in another file and include the menu file into your page

*swish* all goes over my head

I'll look into this, too.

Thanks.

[Draven]

You want it to look [b]REALLY[/i] sexy? Invest some time in learning Ajax.

Or check out Grails.

[theyarerising]

Okay, so I managed to get Server side includes working (god knows how).
My next problem: I've got AWStats running and want to use these stats to output the number of unique visitors to my site.
I know this is ridiculous, but at the moment I'm manually updating the counter every once in a while, which is both boring and irritating (also I can't update it while at work).

So does anyone using AWStats know how I'd acheive this?

Thanks,

[Zero]

A hit counter? Please, just don't.

[djtoast]

Seriously, hit counters are for your grandmother's crochet-pattern-trading site. In 1996.

[Sgt Craig]

Aye, but he is using one as an indicator of when to publish the next chapter of his book i think - i.e. when the counter gets to 100 another chapter goes up.
a bit of a gimmick, but probably the most valid reason i can think to have one on a site.