Re: Site management/ e-commerce (long letter)

Gday Randy,

First of all, get a nice recent photograph of your wife and kids, and get 
one of yourself for them.

Secondly, get a camp bed for your office.


>1) the site has about 500 html files associated with it on an NT server. 
>Marketing has come up with a new design, which they want me to implement.


Oh hallelujiah!   Where would we all be without marketing people?  Have they 
given you the words as well or will it be readable?


>>It's all in nested tables, uses the exact same left hand nav links and 
>>header images on every single page. What is the best way to set this up so 
>>that updates/changes can be implemented site wide with a minimum of fuss? 
>>I just started using Dreamweaver- would a template or library setup be the 
>>way to go? I hear alot about websites & databases, but not sure exactly 
>>how it works. What would *you* do if you weren't very experienced like I 
>>am?<<<


IMHO (**) The best way is to use asp or coldfusion to build your pages from 
a database and use include files for the contstant parts like banner 
headings and nav links etc.

But since this is a new discipline for you, I'd suggest you keep that for 
phase 2 when you are a very experienced webmaster - in a couple of months.

Instead, use the powerful site management features of dreamweaver. (I hope 
you're using v3.0 - its a country mile better than the already awwesom v2)

(1) Put all the common elements into library fragments.   These are the 
items that are common to all (or most) of your pages. Such as the header 
images and nav bars, and footers etc.
(2) for each kind of page (home page, major category page,  subsidiary 
article page, product listing page or whatever kinds of pages you have) make 
a template.
(3) as you're making templates, set up html styles in dreamweaver.  (a DW3 
feature)  This makes sure you can quickly format all your text to the style 
you want without having to use CSS Style sheets.  Alternatively, if you have 
decided to use style sheets, set them up and have them as part of your 
templates.
(4)  BACK UP YOUR TEMPLATES AND STYLE SHEETS.  THEN COPY THEM ONTO A ZIP 
DRIVE OR SOMETHING AND TAKE THEM OFF PREMISES.

Now you can start to make your pages without fuss, knowing that any time you 
have a change to those common elements, you change the library file, and 
whoosh!  the whole site gets updated with the new content, wherever that 
library item is used.  Make a change to your templates, and any page using 
the template gets updated.

Then use the site management screen to upload all the changed pages to the 
site.

With dreamweaver all this is a piece of cake.  The way FrontPage was claimed 
to do it, but didn't.

While you're studying like hell and running this site, and handling al the 
things that people will expect you to have finished in 4 minutes, get 
yourself a copy of something like ColdFusionExpress and a database like 
Access, and start learning that too.

Oh, and on the other days of the week, you can lie back and relax.

Cheers,
Mike Kear
AFP Web Development
Windsor, NSW, Australia
http://www.afp.zip.com.au





>
>2) the company currently sells its software as well as 3rd party products
>thru a commercial shopping cart host, but wants to move everything 
>in-house.
>I am supposed to study up and turn into an e-commerce guru in a fortnight.
>There will be probably 50 items max being sold- and only in the U.S. I've
>heard Cold Fusion, ASP, drumBeat 2000, Interdev, Filemaker/lasso/IIS, etc
>etc. Again, any recommendations on the best way for me to get a handle on
>this, keeping in mind my level of ability? Thanks for any help you can
>offer..
>
>warm regards,
>Randy

______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

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