Re: "Dammit Jim...!

> >Anyway, I'm wanting to suggest that the customer use HTML
> >editor software that has an ability to insert the headers and
> >footers on the fly as he prepares to send them to our server.
>
> No, the point is that when using a *single* file for all the headers and
> footers, a single file can be changed, and instantly is in place across all
> 1000 pages.

Well if HTML editor software can insert HTML on the fly  - like an
"include" statement in C - in preparation for "publishing" to the
server, then there *is* only one copy - on the customer's PC - that
would need to be changed.  The only downside, then, is the need
republish however many pages are affected.  But either way, the number
of changes that a person needs to manually change remains the same.

> Doing this, through SSI, some ASP scripting, or other methods isn't
> unusual -- if the server can't handle that load, an upgrade might be
> in order, rather than requiring the author to manually edit thousands
> of pages.

There may have been a misunderstanding about the solution I was
going for which would NOT require editing thousands of pages.

Or perhaps different philosophies are at work here.  I grew up :) as a
programmer.  So asking the computer to do something many thousands
of times a day with the results always being the SAME - where "always"
is defined as contiguous days or weeks :) - is highly ineffecient
from a programmer's point of view.

It's kinda like setting a variable in Perl, let's say, whose value
never changes inside a "for" loop.  Can the system afford to set
this variable many hundreds of times, once for each iteration of the loop?
Yes.  Is it therefore the right way to go, my take is no.  Am I
being too picky?  Perhaps....

So a person like me compares the amount of CPU required to invoke
all of these new SSI's thousands of times a day vs the CPU required
to accommodate an infrequent republishing of major segments of
the web site.  I'm thinkin' I'm better off with the republishing...

-John

HWG: hwg-servers mailing list archives, maintained by Webmasters @ IWA