Updating thousands of html pages

this tip will save some of you hours!

[Chris999]

I often see threads on this forum saying "It would take me ages to update my pages, I have thousands."

You can update html in thousands of pages using a freeware tool called Search and Replace 98.

Even though I usually generate my static html from an Access database i find this is the most valuable tool I have for quickly updating my content.

The beauty of this tool is the fact you can specify multiple lines to replace. So you give it a few lines of html to replace and it will wizz through all your pages.

An example would be changing the title of all your static pages, your keywords tag, or updating AdSense code.

[edited by: Chris999 at 5:17 pm (utc) on April 1, 2006]

[hal12b]

Don't forget about using include pages too.

[Andrew Bassett]

Yeah.. I avoided that headache altogether; just make all my sites dynamic.

[Mentat]

SSI is the word for this :)

[Chris999]

Yes server side includes are the way forward.

But many webmasters just write thousands of articles without implementing any sort of SSI system. This helps update those pages.

[mm1220]

SSI is the word for this :)

PHP, all the way. The syntax for including files is really as simple as SSI but the exposure to PHP code will stand people in good stead when they go messing around with PHP based forums and CMSs.

[djohnson]

PHP + mySQL here. Since I do this for work, guess what all of my sites are written in... :) Since google may or may not like php pages, a simple .htaccess file converts all .php to .html. Keeps everything nice and simple.

[eeek]

You can update html in thousands of pages using a freeware tool called Search and Replace 98

Or you could just use perl:

perl -pi -e 's/oldstuff/newstuff' *.html

[mm1220]

Or you could just use perl

He could, but seeing as he uses Access and an editor with '98' in the title it's a safe bet that he's using windows and is unlikely to have a perl install handy.