Brainstorming Site Navigation Options

Trying to philosophize on easy-to-modify, bot-friendly navigation method

[Jetgirl]

I have been working for several years on a website that has slowly grown from just a handful of pages to 200+. Because I wanted the site to be bot-friendly, I have hand coded the entire site using a text-editor (using XHTML and CSS).

I am now trying to be a bit more forward thinking in making some changes to the site navigation method. If I ever desire to make changes to the global navigation, touching 200+ pages by hand and re-uploading each page individually onto my host (that's the worst part...) is going to be crazy. Well, to be honest, I'd rather do it now before it doubles in size again, thus I have spent some time looking into some options. The main option I have considered is JavaScript, but I don't like the reduction in not just bot friendliness but also in handicap accessibility.

Am I just crazy to be trying to maintain something like this in a standard text editor these days and/or is there some method other than JavaScript that is more user and bot-friendly that I could implement?

[ken_b]

I manually maintain the navigation on a straight html static page site with what's approaching a couple thousand pages, so it's possible, but not much fun.

If you have a global search and replace function it can simplify this process a lot.

The big thing is to get your link path patterns down solid before you go to far. Spending the time to preplan link paths is critical. You may really need to stare into your crystal ball for this one, but it's well worth the effort.

[Jetgirl]

Thanks, ken_b.

I keep asking for a crystal ball for Christmas, but I haven't gotten one, yet! The more time I have spent thinking about this issue over the holiday, the more I feel committed to my current path, and it's very nice to hear from someone doing this on a larger scale than I can {currently} fathom my site becomming.

[varya]

I manage several sites that have a few hundred pages and all have static html navigation.

My text editor on steroids is a big help...I can have hundreds of tabs open at once and it has a global search and replace function.

Recently I've started experimenting with Modx, a cms that allows me to manage things dynamically with much of the same control I have when writing static html pages.

[Jetgirl]

I just read up on and tested out using Server Side Includes, and they look promising. I still have a few doubts about even using them (see a new post I created here [webmasterworld.com]).

[sonjay]

Includes are definitely the way to go. I use them even on very small sites. I second Marcia's suggestion in that other thread to consider using php includes rather than SSIs, simply because down the road, as you want to get into more sophisticated scripting and server-side programming, you'll already have your pages set up using php, giving you much greater flexibility.

I can't imagine going back to not using includes, and having to update every single page by hand. I too use a great text editor that lets me do global find-and-replace within a site, but I don't want to have to do that, and I don't want to have to upload every single file in the site just because I added a new item to the navigation.

[OutdoorMan]

I have developed my own CMS which allows me to control every static .html page.

From one single admin page I can alter bread crumbs, top links, footer links, copyright text and so on. When I have made changes in the code I simply just click one button to update all the .html files.

It only takes about one second.