Dreamweaver Templates

[bigjossey]

I'm designing for a big site, and I'm debating on wether to use some sort of template system, especially when it comes to the footer of the page. I do not want to add a link to every single page if something changes. I have used templates on non-database driven websites with desirable results.

Does anyone have any suggestions in what to use for this?

Have you had any problems with using templates in database driven websites?

Have dreamweaver websites worked for you or have you used some other system?

Thanks

[sheila]

I've fiddled around with Dreamweaver templates in the past, although I've never actually used them for production use on a live site.

My recollection of how they work is as follows...

You designate a file as a template in DW.
You then create pages for your web site and base them off of that template file.

When you make changes to the template, you can then run some sort of "update" function and DW then runs through all the files for that site that are stored on your local computer and makes the appropriate changes to your local files. Then you need to upload all of the changed files to the server.

This should work fine on the FutureQuest servers.

Many site owners, however, prefer to use PHP or SSI include files, make the changes only to that file, and wherever the file has been included on their site, those changes instantly appear.

Two different ways of accomplishing the same thing, more or less. ;)

[Jeff]

I use dreamweaver templates extensively, and they work really well exactly as sheila says - you create a template and designate editable regions where you put the contents of each page. If you then edit a template and save it, dreamweaver asks "do you want to update all pages using this template?". I have twice (out of hundreds of updates) encountered a situation where dreamweaver would crash when updating pages which turned out to be a problem with one page - not sure what the cause was but it was fairly quick to copy & paste the content into a new page and get past it. Not a deal breaker.

With that said, if it's a large site, I'd use SSI's (which dreamweaver also helps with by making the contents visible locally). If you use PHP or SSI you won't have to upload all those files over and over with each template change, but instead will only have to make/upload the change once and all pages will instantly show the change when accessed. If you have hundreds and hundreds of pages at some point, this could be a real timesaver, depending on your connection of course. If you have a T1 it probably makes no difference to you.

And of course, processing the SSI calls does put a minimal extra burden on the server...

--six of one, a half dozen of the other...

[Evoir]

I use DW templates alot, along with SSI. It's a great combination, like Jeff said. I usually have 1 or 2 or 3 templates for a site that define the overall design of the site. And then I use SSI for the header files and the navigation and the footer. This way I can change much of the web pages in one fell swoop. Good luck!

[TVB]

I've used them as well in the past, with good success. I agree with the SSI as has been mentioned to make the changes as easily as possible.

[mromero]

I suggest take extra time to design your templates and thus save tons of work in the future. SSI is the best way to include repetitive data which you can update across thousands of pages by changing just one element in your includes file. You can use mod rewrite to get rid of those ugly .shtml file names.

If you do not know how to do it, hire an expert to do it for you. The money and time you invest now will save you lots of hair pulling in the future - when you won't have as much to spare ;-)