Opinions please?

Need some advice on navigation styles

[katgirl]

I've got a website with loads of pages, which I navigate through by using frames:

[queenfans.com...]

I've been told that one of the "10 commandments" of building web sites is not to use frames, so I'm trying to get rid of them. The problem is when I come to the profile section, I have 300 or so pages to sort out, and it'd be a lot of work to change all of them. Should I ignore the "rule", or can anyone suggest another way to navigate which won't give me a headache?

Thanks lots,

KatGirl

ps. the first thing to go is the colour scheme!

[agerhart]

Welcome to WmW Katgirl,

I think this is all a matter of how much work you want to put into this project and what you expect to get out of it.

Another factor might be what your other capabilities are. For instance, if you want to keep the frames, you could always cloak the pages and you may get some good standings this way.

Also, it is possible to use the <no frames> section, but how far you can go with this, I don't know, as I have never used it before. Personally, I never use frames, and I would recommend that you change the format of your pages to not use frames anymore.

There are a few threads that discuss the use of frames, and how to optimize for them here inside the forum.

I am assuming this site is only for personal use? I only checked it quickly, but this was the impression I got.....in this I mean, that it isn't a business site, and isn't commerce enabled.

I think the amount of work you put into this project should depend on what you want to bring out of it.

How competitive are your keywords?

[katgirl]

work, drat...

The site's for people who use a fan club chatroom, and it's non-profit, if that's what you mean. I hope to improve my web design skills through the site.

When there were only a few profiles, it was linked together using a table on one page, but as it's grown I've found it easier to use the frame, because I can then just change a couple of lines when I add the new link. I'm willing to put in a lot of work initially, to get it all sorted out, if in the end I can spend less time on it. It was only meant to be a hobby, I have other work to do!

should I just have the frame on the profile section, and get rid of all others? I've been looking for a script that might build a link table for me, maybe by reading from a text file, haven't had any luck on that.

[agerhart]

Depending on what your capabilities are, not your capabilities, but what kind of resources you have, I know that this could be done in ASP. We have done similar things here, and all you have to do is have the user submit the link and you can post it into an ongoing table.

Then again, the spiders like ASP about as much as they like frames.......

[theperlyking]

Katgirl, a common way of achieving the ease (from the webmasters point of view) of maintanence that frames bring is to use SSI (server side includes), basically this means your menu structure is in one file and you "include" it in each page.
The benefit of this is that you have the ease of just needing to edit one file to add a link, the downside is its a little more techy and of course you will have to go through your pages once initially to build in the include code.

[knighty]

all you have to do is in each of your pages put an SSI command to include the page that you use to navigate.

its a bit of work at first but will pay in the long run

[agerhart]

the same thing can be done with a library item...

[theperlyking]

It looks like katgirl is using a Unix server so I suspect she's more likely to be able to use SSI's than ASP.

[katgirl]

SSI's sound like what I need, where can I get a good tutorial/script from?

[Froggyman]

Your server has to be able to excecute SSI. Might want to contact your host about it first as it often is an optional feature.

I wanted a site that didn't rely on frames but as the site grew larger I began to recieve complaints about navigation. Because I use SSI for a few other tasks, I didn't want to slow the server up any more than it was. I ended up creating an optional toolbar that can be turned on and off as needed by the user. The toolbar is simply a narrow frame at the top of the page with a search bar and the drop down box which contains the links. It has turned out to be very effective in my case.

[theperlyking]

Katgirl check out [useforesite.com...] it seems to be a reasonable tutorial.

As Froggyman says you may need to explicitly ask your host to enable it (hosts tend to not enable it by default as it can have security implications.

[katgirl]

It is enabled, I found this page:

[adashimar.hypermart.net...]

there's a little test that you can do to see if ssi is enabled, and it worked, so I can use it :) I have lots of stuff to keep me busy now, thanks for your suggestions!

*mwah*

Kat

[Xoc]

agerhart-

Every one of my pages is ASP, and I have had absolutely no problems with the search engines ranking my sites high. I'm sitting at #1 on AltaVista, #4 on Google, #14 on Fast, and #2 on Excite on my primary keywords. The problem only comes when you put stuff after a "?" on the url line. If you have "?" on the url line, then most of the search engines consider the page dynamic and don't index it, Google and Fast being the exceptions.

BTW, katgirl, welcome to WebmasterWorld.

[katgirl]

I bought some books on CGI/Perl and javascript yesterday, read them last night, and wrote my first script this morning... and it worked!! :) :) :) :) I am now the proud owner of a list of every .htm file in a directory! :) Well on my way to turning it into a menu, thanks for your help!