What do I need to learn to more easily manage my websites?

Is it PHP, ASP...?

[vivalasvegas]

Although I manage a few websites (my own) I'm a slow learner when it comes to new stuff like PHP, ASP... I know it's possible to somehow more easily manage my websites. Basically I wanna make changes to all/many pages on a website at a time. I've heard about dynamic content but it's all so confusing to me. I wanna learn but don't know where to start. Any help appreciated.

Dan

[Iguana]

I'm a web developer who has worked with Microsoft technology for more than 10 years - and I would recommend PHP rather than ASP. It is much cheaper to get a Linux/ApachePHP/MySQL enabled host. The killer aspect of this is the ability with Apache to use .htaccess to make your dynamic pages appear as static HTML pages to the Search Engines (it can be done with MS IIS but is more complicated).

Just to add another factor into your question, I generate most of my pages using Visual Basic against a database on my PC (simply writing the HTML to a file). I can make my changes and then FTP the files (well, gzipped archives) up to the server. This is because I only need to update my sites twice a week at most. If you don't need to have a truly dynamic site then other solutions such as Dreamweaver or FrontPage (I hate them both but they can make your life easier) and judicious rewriting of your sites can make the change management of your sites better.

[MatthewHSE]

If all you need to do is make a few site-wide changes at once, like to your main navigation, then you might want to look into Server Side Includes (SSI). The learning curve on using SSI is nil, and it can make your life much easier. (Remember you can use .htaccess to set any file type to be parsed for SSI, so you don't have to be stuck with the .shtml file extension.)

[vivalasvegas]

Thanks. I need to make menu changes and modify other content such as rates or simply information that changes from time to time. Currently I use Dreamweaver to make sitewide changes at once, but then I must upload files. I want to somehow automate this process even more.