[thelist] Best/Good way to organize a website.

[Chris W. Parker]

hi.

(this is a bit lengthy, so just bear with me.)

i have one master file (index.asp) which is the framework (contains
basic layout) for all the other pages in the website so far. this main
page has, of course, a top banner, left side navigation, and a main
content section (which ends up being he rest of the page.)

in the index.asp page i use a list of Select statements and
Server.Execute's to include the files that make up the different pages.
an example would be this...

if someone clicks on the faq link they are sent to this URL...

http://myIPaddress/website/index.asp?section=faq

inside the index.asp the Select statements have determined (based on the
variable 'section' containg the value 'faq') that the faq source page
should be loaded as the content of the index.asp page.

these source files all lie in the root directory.

/index.asp
/mainSRC.asp
/faqSRC.asp
/menuSRC.asp (the left hand navigation get's built based on the current
section so i chose to make it an included file.)
/etc. etc.

the file (with bad ascii art) would look like this...

+---------------------+
|     TOP NAV         |
+---------------------+
| L |                 |
| E |     INCLUDED    |
| F |                 |
| T |                 |
|   |      PAGE(S)    |
| N |                 |
| A |                 |
| V |                 |
+---+-----------------+



conversely on another website i did, i created a header.asp and a
footer.asp and just included those files in a content page. like so...

+---------------------+
|  INCLUDED HEADER    |
+---------------------+
|                     |
|                     |
|                     |
|     STATIC PAGE     |
|                     |
|                     |
|                     |
+---------------------+
|  INCLUDED FOOTER    |
+---------------------+

the static pages of this website were located in diferent directories
based on content...

/faq/faq.asp
/products/products.asp

this way seems to be less efficient since i have to make a complete page
and just accomodate for the inclusion of the header and footer files.
the first method i illustrated seems to make more sense to me since i
only have to concern myself with a content layout and include one (maybe
a few other small pages) maybe two files.


now to my question...

what way among you web people do you think is the best/most efficient
way to manage content in terms of page layout/infrastructure? do you
think it makes more sense to do it the first way? the second way? or a
different way?


i'm looking forward to any comments and suggestion you might have.

thanks,
chris.

p.s. please excuse any words i may have out (i seem to do that often)
and also spelling errors. ;)