[thelist] HTML optimization opinion (revised)

Tyme nopun at bellsouth.net
Tue Sep 25 12:18:26 CDT 2001


Ray Hill had a good suggestion about using PHP and parsing .htm files as
PHP.  Unfortunately, the current web host (prepaid for the year) does not
support PHP on Windows server.  So, back to the original approaches:
-------------------------------

Am about to start "optimizing" a large (400+) static site.  Can't decide
what approach to use.  Your suggestions on the below appreciated.

SITE STRUCTURE:
~40 "groups" (county depts.)
~10 web pages per group
Each page has 2 sections the same, but unique to the group:
    "Header": <head>...</head> with uniqueness in the group's meta keywords
and <title>.
    "Footer": Each group has a submenu*.

Example page from 1 of the groups:
http://www.co.brunswick.nc.us/sample_admin1.htm

* Submenu links from all groups are combined on an Index page.  see
http://www.co.brunswick.nc.us/az-index.htm

TASK:
Optimize (for maintenance) the "Header" and "Footer" sections, through SSI
or other.

APPROACH #1:
Use SSI_header and SSI_footer for each group.
Advantage: Current filename extension of .htm will not have to change
(server config. for parse of .htm);
Advantage: Site can easily migrate to a non-Windows server in the future, if
desired.
Disadvantage: Will result in 80 additional files.

APPROACH #2:
Put the unique information (keywords; submenu links) into a database and
dynamically write it to the web page using ASP/SQL.
Advantage: Will require no additional files.
Advantage: Will allow dynamic creation/update of the Index page. (This is a
key navigation page for users with Javascript turned off or for older
browsers.)
Advantage: Can replace some existing Javascript (e.g., page update date)
with server side scripting.
Advantage: Can add more dynamic stuff.
Disadvantage: Will require changing the existing .htm extensions to .asp,
perhaps interferring with outside links to the site.
Disadvantage: Will make moving the site to a non-Windows server in the
future, _if_ desired, more work.

Note: With Approach #2, I thought that I could create a 404 page that
instructed users to try the same page filename but with .asp extension.
Unless server can be configured to interpret *.htm as *.asp -- that would be
awesome.

Thank you!
Tyme








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