5 replies to this topic

[kevinoneill]

Hey guys. I'm picking up a project that will continue to grow over the next year (wed design project). I'm looking at a few hundred pages. Most all will be static.

Currently I like to use php includes or asp includes for such things as navigation, headers, and footers. Oh course this means every page must be a .php or .asp Is that something I should be concerned about? I would edit the pages directly threw FTP currently using Transmit or now CODA.

In the past I had also used Dreamweavers Templates to adjust multiple pages at once. But that requires everpage to be altered and resaved to the server, it takes time.

I'm curious to what approach any of you have to working with larger sites?

[MetalSkin]

Well considering it's static I would say php is the way to go.

Depends on what you mean by large. I would have thought that a 'large' site would use .NET (not sure what is used here, .asp?) or J2EE (which would mean jsp for performing the 'includes') so you would do it via that.

However I expect in your situation that php would be more than appropriate. I cannot comment about .asp as it is outside my experience (I have a java background). From what I have seen of a few commercial high load sites, php was more than okay. Hmm haven't checked out Dreamweavers support for php yet, one imagines that they support include in the design but haven't checked it out. Unfortunately now a days I just design applications, I don't write them.

[rc69]

I believe even google runs off php, so ya, php is more than ideal for large sites. If you have proof that google isn't php, then believe that p2l is

Even with dreamweavers lack of decent support for php, i would recommend still recommend using it. If you want more than just color-coding for your programming needs, there are other php editors out there (a topic was recently started about them, go ahead and run through it).

[Archangel]

And you'll definitely still want to use includes for headers, footers, menus etc. as it will save you a ton of time when something needs changed. and it's not a bad idea to get into the habit of naming everything the language you're able to use. Even if something starts out as a static page if it ever needs to turn dynamic now you can do it w/o having to change the extension or any links. Saves a lot of hassle.

[MetalSkin]

opps my would should have been a could. I ment you could use .NET or J2EE, not would. Sorry for any confusion. .NET and J2EE are primarily used for server side business processing, but the jsp side of J2EE you could use for what your doing. Personally I would use PHP. You will find most hosting companies support php out of the box, while getting support for J2EE isn't that common (well from what I have seen).

[kevinoneill]

MetalSkin, on Jul 8 2007, 06:03 AM, said:

opps my would should have been a could. I ment you could use .NET or J2EE, not would. Sorry for any confusion. .NET and J2EE are primarily used for server side business processing, but the jsp side of J2EE you could use for what your doing. Personally I would use PHP. You will find most hosting companies support php out of the box, while getting support for J2EE isn't that common (well from what I have seen).

Thank you for your responses. ASP is installed on the server, no PHP.

I'm not familiar at all with J2EE or .NET

I was curious what larger sites being say 100 odd pages. Maybe 200 do when say you rename a page or an image. In dreamweaver with smaller sites I've done it would ask you if you wanted to update all pages. And it would just go threw and change everything for you.

I think I will go with ASP includes. Only other issue, which may or may not be a big one, is this is a University server, lots of security restrictions. I know I tried once already to use an include with no success, it doesn't seem to allow you to include from a parent folder. I'll have to talk to the tech guys who run the server.