Dynamic Websites - Navigation

Lil306

I'm busy designing my new site, something I want to do in template is add a navigation menu option in the address body of the page so that it updates automatically based on the pages being accessed

Example://

Home page - You are here: HOME
Car Pages - You are here: HOME > CARS
Document on Cars - You are here: HOME > CARS > ABC123

All of the above would be hyperlinks that were clickable for fast navigation similar to a sitemap as such

How would I generate this code. Obviously it's html in the form of hyperlinks but as it's generated dynamically I'm guessing a script of some sort. .ASP?

Could anyone give me a pointer as to what this type of thing is then I can do the research myself on how to go forward

Thankoos

WilliamO

The link navigations are called: BreadCrumbs - You can find examples in this article:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12507032/how-to-create-you-are-here-navigations

You are basically looking at PHP coding unless you want to hardcode your links into each and every web page.

wonka

If you're teaching yourself to program, and/or create websites, then that's great. As WilliamO says, the most popular scripting language for creating websites is PHP.

However, if all you want to do is create a website yourself, quickly, there are plenty of free content management systems out there, such as Wordpress, or Drupal.

Lil306

WilliamO wrote: »

The link navigations are called: BreadCrumbs - You can find examples in this article:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12507032/how-to-create-you-are-here-navigations

You are basically looking at PHP coding unless you want to hardcode your links into each and every web page.

Thanks now that I know what they're called I'll look into articles and review further. I'm going to be using a template for all of the site anyway so will probably just need to code it to call a PHP script possibly. More research but it's fun

wonka wrote: »

If you're teaching yourself to program, and/or create websites, then that's great. As WilliamO says, the most popular scripting language for creating websites is PHP.

However, if all you want to do is create a website yourself, quickly, there are plenty of free content management systems out there, such as Wordpress, or Drupal.

Thanks, I already have my own website at the moment. Doesn't get major hits, but I get a few results on the first page of google searches so I still get traffic

I mainly trying to develop it. I use the website as a research post for developing my knowledge in IT and troubleshooting. I do all the configuration and setup myself so helps me understand how it all works when I break it and fix it again.

I'm mainly redesigning the site because I'm bored with the look and working on better SEO optimisation and reducing bouncerate on my website

InsideInsurance

Lil306 wrote: »

How would I generate this code. Obviously it's html in the form of hyperlinks but as it's generated dynamically I'm guessing a script of some sort. .ASP?

Classic ASP (.asp) is very outdated given its effective replacement ASP.Net (.aspx) was released back in 2002

Depending what your long term aims are you dont want to be bothering with Classic ASP. If you just want to do your own websites or possibly do some work with small start ups then learn PHP. If you want to work with large blue chip companies then .Net is probably the better option.

As others have said, what you describe is a breadcrumb trail and can easily be achieved with PHP or .Net. That said, ordinarily it would be recommended that you use a content management system in which case a breadcrumb is a built in feature and something you simply need to add to the template rather than build yourself.

Lil306

InsideInsurance wrote: »

Classic ASP (.asp) is very outdated given its effective replacement ASP.Net (.aspx) was released back in 2002

Depending what your long term aims are you dont want to be bothering with Classic ASP. If you just want to do your own websites or possibly do some work with small start ups then learn PHP. If you want to work with large blue chip companies then .Net is probably the better option.

As others have said, what you describe is a breadcrumb trail and can easily be achieved with PHP or .Net. That said, ordinarily it would be recommended that you use a content management system in which case a breadcrumb is a built in feature and something you simply need to add to the template rather than build yourself.

THank you, scriping language is unknown to be. I didn't know whether asp was still used. Everything seems to be migrating to HTML 5 now, but my site has dreamweaver templates and PHP for coding so will help me along. I like to develop as I go. My site does't use any templates, I built it myself. I like developing it that way

InsideInsurance

Classic ASP is used in a tiny number of sites these days. You can make ASP run under .Net with minimal changes but Classic ASP is a scripting language and so inefficient where as .Net allows proper OOP and precompiling of the code so massively quicker to run and has many more functions built into it.

Dreamweaver 5.5 and beyond supports HTML5

Dreamweaver templates, if they are how they used to be, are not the right way to go. If you are going with PHP then you should use includes or if you are going with ASP.Net then it should be Master pages. The advantages of both is if you change it in the future you change 1 file. With Dreamweaver templates you have to change every single page that uses it (though it does some of this for you)

Lil306

InsideInsurance wrote: »

Classic ASP is used in a tiny number of sites these days. You can make ASP run under .Net with minimal changes but Classic ASP is a scripting language and so inefficient where as .Net allows proper OOP and precompiling of the code so massively quicker to run and has many more functions built into it.

Dreamweaver 5.5 and beyond supports HTML5

Dreamweaver templates, if they are how they used to be, are not the right way to go. If you are going with PHP then you should use includes or if you are going with ASP.Net then it should be Master pages. The advantages of both is if you change it in the future you change 1 file. With Dreamweaver templates you have to change every single page that uses it (though it does some of this for you)

Thanks, it's something I'll look into

My site uses a dreamweaver template, I just carry out the changes on the main template, and any pages designed on that template inherit the designs and structure. I then just apply the relevant classes and voila. Probably not the best way forward but I'm learning there. I'm always develeoping the skills for it

InsideInsurance

With the last version of Dreamweaver I used, admittedly a long time ago, the template change actually results in every file using it being changed and needing to be uploaded. If you use the .Net or PHP methodology then only a single file needs to be uploaded, thus the whole site changes constantly and instantly with no risk of you forgetting to upload one or two pages.

Obviously for a small site this makes fairly little difference but if you had a very large site using a farm of servers etc then this can be much more material. Given it makes life simpler its best to adopt best practices now than having to re-engineer the site at a later date.

Lil306

InsideInsurance wrote: »

With the last version of Dreamweaver I used, admittedly a long time ago, the template change actually results in every file using it being changed and needing to be uploaded. If you use the .Net or PHP methodology then only a single file needs to be uploaded, thus the whole site changes constantly and instantly with no risk of you forgetting to upload one or two pages.

Obviously for a small site this makes fairly little difference but if you had a very large site using a farm of servers etc then this can be much more material. Given it makes life simpler its best to adopt best practices now than having to re-engineer the site at a later date.

I'm a little confused by what you mean by this as if all sites using the template are modified at the same time it would be quicker when updating the site?

My site files are stored locally on my webserver, I do not have to upload anyway so do all the hosting myself

If I did hosting and had a large amount of files to upload. I could possibly do a batch upload by decompressing all the files from zipped folders as cpanel and other control panels allow you to do that. So it wouldn't matter too much if the site had a large volume of pages. If that's what your referring to?