What is the best way to get my menu on every page

[Benedizione]

I have had a terrible time getting logged into this program to post a question! Managed to figure out some css coding eventually of which I had never used before. I replaced a css coded menu where I used to have "frames." Now, I am wondering if there is a way to make my menu appear on all my pages without copying and pasting the css code on every page? That is, other than using "frames" again. I would like to avoid "frames" if possible.

The website I am trying to work on is here........ http://elvispics.tripod.com/

Andrea

[Cball]

Here is a link to CSS Frames

http://www.dynamicdrive.com/style/layouts/category/C11/


But I just copied and pasted all the code on every page for my site.

[ddadmin]

Actually, what you want is to use something like SSI (server side includes). When you see pages with a .shtml extension, that's SSI at work. Check out the following tutorial: http://www.javascriptkit.com/howto/ssi2.shtml

[djr33]

PHP and other server side programming languages can give you more control over the process if need be. For the basics, that should work, though.

[boxxertrumps]

Here is the php script i use for my menus...

function menu($main) {
  $full = file_get_contents("http://localhost/includes/menu.txt");
  $ready = explode("\r\n", $full);
  $count = "0";
  while (($count >= "0") && ($count <= count($ready)-2)) {
    $one = explode("|", $ready[$count]);
    if($main == TRUE) {
      echo "<div class=\"item\"><a href=\"". $one['0'] ."\">". $one['1'] ."</a></div>\r\n<div class=\"spacer\"></div>";
    } else {
      echo "<br /><a href=\"". $one['0'] ."\">". $one['1'] ."</a>\r\n";
    };
    $count++;
  };
}; 

Then in menu.txt i have
http://domain.com/url|Item name
htp://domain.com/?page|next item name
etc...

[djr33]

But you'd need to include that in each.

Or you could do another layer of PHP includes, so that you use one main php page included on each page, which has already parsed the text file.

[boxxertrumps]

Thats actually what i did, i have several includes on my main index.php file.
but the reason i needed it as a function was to display the same links differently. (Here and Here)

[Benedizione]

For instance, if I wanted to use this css frame layout http://www.dynamicdrive.com/style/la...-frame-layout/ would I create a filename like "menu.txt" (or what?) and put in this code and fill in the appropriate fields???

Does this work similiar to using simple ordinary frames? I did not see any information on the page to define how to use the code.

Andrea

[ddadmin]

Benedizione:
You wouldn't be using CSS frames at all if what you're trying to do is include a file into multiple pages (so changing that file is reflected on all pages that carry it). CSS Frames is just a type of layout whereby a certain section of the page doesn't scroll with the rest of the content. It has nothing to do with what you're trying to accomplish here, which needs to be done via a server side technology, such as SSI or PHP. The key is what the page type of your site is- .shtml, .php, or some other server side enabled pages.

[Benedizione]

Ok, so I can use a "PHP" coding and create a page called "menu.txt" and put this code on that page:

Then in menu.txt i have
http://domain.com/url|Item name
htp://domain.com/?page|next item name
etc...

Then where do I place the other long coding you posted? Does that go on the main page? Or every page? How do you make it work?

Andrea