Web site navigation

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Web site navigation

Help needed

Jose_P

10:22 pm on Jul 5, 2012 (gmt 0)

Please help! I'm building my website and I would like to navigate from the Home page (index.html) to the rest of the pages, and from the pages back to the Home page or some other page. Can someone help me do it? I’m very, very new to this. I’m using Dreamweaver CS5.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<div class="sidebar1">
<ul class="nav">
<li><a href="#">Link one</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Link two</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Link three</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Link four</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Link five</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Link six</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Link seven</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Link eight</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Link nine</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Link ten</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Link eleven</a></li>
</ul>

Kendo

11:18 pm on Jul 5, 2012 (gmt 0)

Make Link #1 = home page.

Jose_P

11:28 pm on Jul 5, 2012 (gmt 0)

Thanks for your help; then;

<div class="sidebar1">
<ul class="nav">
<li><a href="#">Home</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Link two</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Link three</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Link four</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Link five</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Link six</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Link seven</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Link eight</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Link nine</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Link ten</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Link eleven</a></li>
</ul>

Jose_P

12:25 am on Jul 6, 2012 (gmt 0)

BUt, I would like to know how to make the navigation "inter pages".

creeking

12:40 am on Jul 6, 2012 (gmt 0)

is this what you mean?

<li><a href="index.html">Home</a></li>
<li><a href="page2.html">Page Two</a></li>
<li><a href="page3.html">Page Three</a></li>

etc.

Jose_P

2:04 am on Jul 6, 2012 (gmt 0)

Creeking, I really don't know, since I'm new to this.I just wanto to navigate from one page to the other. The Dreamweaver has the sidebar with the codes I Posted, but no navigation takes place.

g1smd

2:13 am on Jul 6, 2012 (gmt 0)

When linking to the home page link to href="/" and not to a named index file.

Jose_P

2:17 am on Jul 6, 2012 (gmt 0)

g1smd, How do I do that?

tedster

2:18 am on Jul 6, 2012 (gmt 0)

It sounds like you're in a bit over your head right now. You need some idea of HTML and CSS work to make good use of Dreamweaver. And before that you need a strong sense of Information Architecture to establisj a site structure where navigation really makes sense to the visitor.

Here's one helpful discussion about IA: Information Architecture for the Small Site [webmasterworld.com]

Basic HTML and CSS can be learned pretty fast and many questions will siply dissolve as if they never were. I started out with a physical book (imagine that!) It was "Sam's Teach Yourself HTML 4 in 24 Hours." Doing the exercises was the trick, not just reading.

If you want to pick up some particular area of HTML quickly, there is useful online instruction and even online live exercises you can work with in real time at W3Schools.com. Just beware - this site is NOT an official part of the W3c, which is the standards body for HTML code. However, for getting a quick handle on something you need, it's pretty good and well used by many,

Jose_P

2:23 am on Jul 6, 2012 (gmt 0)

tedster, thank you very much. I'm not a bit over, but a whole over...and for some time now, this navigation stuff has been a set back.

incrediBILL

2:49 am on Jul 6, 2012 (gmt 0)

Navigation isn't complicated at all.

Think of a website as a set of pages and you're just building a table of contents.

If a table of contents is over your head, then you're in trouble ;)

Kendo

3:13 am on Jul 6, 2012 (gmt 0)

Navigation isn't complicated at all.

It is if your new to it. Don't forget the errors that we all made in early days and still see others make like:

- C:\My Documents\Web stuff\index.html

And this one that doesn't work on Apache servers...

- /var/www/site.com/home page.html

incrediBILL

7:11 am on Jul 6, 2012 (gmt 0)

It is if your new to it.

New to what, the planet?

Kendo

7:17 am on Jul 6, 2012 (gmt 0)

New to what, the planet?

Ah, you should be on our support team when advising a client to simply copy'n'paste two lines lines of html code between the head tags on their page.

Then she says "what are head tags?" or "what is html?".

lucy24

8:10 am on Jul 6, 2012 (gmt 0)

I think what he wants is some type of include so he doesn't have to, ahem, include the identical list of links on every page. Just make it once and have it show up everywhere. But you can't do that in html/css alone.

The tricky bit is that it is perfectly legal to have a page link to itself, like <a href = "thispage.html">here!</a> when you are already on thispage. But boy, is it annoying. At least to this user ;) "Wait a minute. Wasn't I here a minute ago? Is this a different page that just looks the same along the top?"

When you say
<a href="#">
are you just using the # as a placeholder? In links, # has a special meaning. It means go to a particular place that has its own tags, like <a name = "coolstuff"> and/or <a id = "coolstuff">

:: intermission here for heated argument which OP will not understand and does not need to hear::

either on this page
<a href = "#coolstuff">more about widgets</a>
or on some other page
<a href = "/someotherdirectory/someotherpage.html#coolstuff">more than you ever wanted to know about widgets</a>

HTML and CSS are both very forgiving. They're meant to be. It's not like programming languages where you misplace one parenthesis and the whole thing either plays dead or goes into perpetual beachball mode. You have to really try to write html that won't display, or css that isn't recognized.

piatkow

10:18 am on Jul 6, 2012 (gmt 0)

Then she says "what are head tags?" or "what is html?".

You mean you have got past "what is copy and paste"?

I think what he wants is some type of include

Maybe but he needs to learn how to create basic links first.

@Jose_P you sound like somebody who has just bought a car and is trying to learn how to drive by reading the owner's manual.

Park this project for a week, read some basic html tutorials and create some test pages totally longhand using Notepad or some other text editor. After that you will have a better understanding of what Dreamweaver is and is not doing for you and also what people are trying to say to you here.

Jose_P

10:32 am on Jul 6, 2012 (gmt 0)

Hey guys, If I’m sinning, I’ll go to church; I’m just a Philosophy professor trying to build a web page, not an alien or astronaut from outer space or a moron. Besides, no, I don’t have a whole day to read the driver’s manual every time a buy a new car, I buy ‘em simple; P for Park, D for driving and R for reverse.
I’m only trying to get some help and advice, not trying to conquest other man’s land.

Sorry to waken up your passions.

jecasc

1:29 pm on Jul 6, 2012 (gmt 0)

Question: Are you interested in learning how HTML works and using it in the future?

If yes, then I'd advise you start here and spent a few hours to learn some basics. It really does not take long to get the basic concept of HTML:

[w3schools.com...]

It's a real good website, where you also can try out your exmples online. For example if you want to experiment a little with links, just go here:

[w3schools.com...]

If you are not interested at all in how a website works under the hood, but only want to have one, then I would advise signing up with a service like wordpress.

tedster

1:30 pm on Jul 6, 2012 (gmt 0)

Well, you don't need to master this HTML car, but it does take some driving lessons. Unfortunately your question does not yet have enough detail to give you any more useful an answer.

This forum here is about HTML itself, written manually. We do have a forum about WYSIWYG Editors [webmasterworld.com], which is what Dreamweaver is. There's also a New to Web Development [webmasterworld.com] forum that may offer you some help.

[edited by: tedster at 12:11 pm (utc) on Aug 11, 2012]