Forum Moderators: phranque
Is it a bad idea to build the whole site in html and hope that one day i will have either the resources or skills to "re-develop"?
Has anyone built a directory site this way?
Thanks.
I don’t think that these days there is much difference between dynamic and static HTML in terms of SEO, both get indexed equally. The only difference is dynamic site’s dependency on database response, but that is often minor delay (milliseconds).
Does a Directory website have to be database driven?
I am assuming you mean a data base on a server. (strictly speaking, no matter how you do it if it is a directory it comes from or is a data base, even if you type it all in to html pages).
I have built directories (lists of individuals with contact information, list of websites with urls linked to site, etc.) One way to do it is to have the directory in Access, Word, Excel, or some desktop application (this is probably already the case).
You can build the rest of the page in Front Page or some html editor (wysiwyg or just a text editor). Copy the html to a MS Word document. Build the html tags for each line: For a email address that is hyperlinked <a href="mailto:<<email>>"><<email>></a>
where <<email>> is the location for the mail merge field for the Excel column headed "email". (I can't make the actual marks here, but << >> represents the field placed by the mail merge wizard.)
Run the mail merge. Save the word document as a word document for the next update. Then save the word document as plain text and change the extension from .txt to .html (DO NOT save as a web page or save as html). Now you have an html page with the directory along with everything else you want on the page.
When you update the data source (Excel or whatever) with new or changed entries, just open the word document and repeat the previous paragraph. You will then have the updated html page to upload to the server.
You can use any web site host, don't need any software other than what you already should have. It takes only a few minutes to set up and even less time to maintain. Also the directory source document can be updated by others and e-mailed to you.
One not-for-profit organization uses this method for a membership committee. The data source has a column for committee assignments, they have a web page sorted alphabetically and another sorted by committee. Like many non profits, they used "begged for" space on someone else's server with no ability to use server-side applications. Begging goes only so far ;-}
Then at the point in the html for the page use Word's mail merge feature to take information from the data source (such as Excel). You use the "directory" option in the wizard.
i have no idea on how to build a backend for it
That's OK, you don't need to built it from scratch yourself - there are a load of pre-written scripts out there which will do the job nicely. You can start with the default setup and customize as required. That way, it is far easier to get started, and you've got a tested product ready to work on.
Is it a bad idea to build the whole site in html and hope that one day i will have either the resources or skills to "re-develop"?
There probably aren't too many bad-ideas from a development point of view. My directory is 100% html, maintained by hand. Not the best way, but it's still small enough to manage with only about 60 pages.
And I'm developing the skills needed to make it dynamic - one of these days. Had I waited until I have all the skills then 2 things would occur. 1) I wouldn't have some of the links I have today, because I was waiting, and 2) now that I have some new skills I'm busier than ever and who knows when a directory type project will become important enough to spend time with.
