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envirobay · Joined: 17 Nov 2005 Posts: 624 Location: Boise, Id

Okay, I am working on my website now that Christmas is over. And I just realized a huge problem I will certainly have in the future. Maybe someone here can help me come up with a solution.

First let me explain what I want to do:
I want a menu on the left hand side of my store that has all my product catagories and subcatagories. I would prefer a drop down/collaspable menu that can be expanded from the cataogory/subcatagory levels. But that is not my main problem.

Here is my BIG problem... If I put a menu on all of my pages (say 200+ products) and then I need to change that menu for whatever reason, I will have to change it over 200 times. Does that make sense?

So my question is this: Is there a way to have a master menu that will load on all of my store/item pages? What I want is to be able to change one thing, one time and then have it automatically update to all the other pages, instead of manually updating all my product pages (say 200 times or so). Doing it manually will surely drive me NUTS (and take forever).

Am I making sense? Sorry if I am confusing to understand. If you want to take a look at my store and see what I am talking about here is a link: http://www.envirotek.biz/store.htm
Please note: I am not trying to promote my store, I just want some help. Take a look if my inability to express myself has confused you.

Thanks in advance for any help you guys can lend.

knappschiles · Joined: 25 May 2005 Posts: 4035 Location: Wi

I know exactly what you are asking as I'm doing the same thing right now. I've needed to update my web site for quite a while and finally designed the "look" I want.

What you need is called CSS. You put all the basic "template" type info in a special page and then that page is refered to in the header of all pages that you want to look that way.

My problem is that I don't know how to do it. The W3schools has a tut page here http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp
But so far it just confuses me even more.

If you figure it out, let me know too.

Carol

angelsolutions

Yo envirobay!

Mine is a purchased shopping cart from godaddy, but take a look at the menus and see if there's anything you can use in the coding? (regarding how they set up the menus)

Angelsolutions Boutique Shop

Hope this helps. I didn't build mine, but if there's something there that can help....

sylvia
angelsolutions

bidup

Hi envirobay,

What you need is a separate file called header and call your pages to it.

Example

include_once ("header.xxx"); (xxx = php, htm, html)

So if you design your header menu and side bars, and name it header.xxx and just edit all your pages and place include_once ("header.xxx"); it will automatically update all the pages.

I mainly work with php, cgi & perl, so it could be different in html format. But if you get stuck let me know, and I will give you a hand.

I have around 6000 pages, and just use one page to update everything but thats in perl.

Hope this helps

Regards
Andrew

Earthfragments.com · Posted: Wed Dec 28, 2005 10:23 pm Post subject:

This one is good and free:

http://www.javascriptmenubuilder.com/

Dooley · Joined: 29 Jul 2005 Posts: 53

envirobay wrote (View Post): › docWrite("quote")
Okay, I am working on my website now that Christmas is over. And I just realized a huge problem I will certainly have in the future. Maybe someone here can help me come up with a solution.

First let me explain what I want to do:
I want a menu on the left hand side of my store that has all my product catagories and subcatagories. I would prefer a drop down/collaspable menu that can be expanded from the cataogory/subcatagory levels. But that is not my main problem.

Here is my BIG problem... If I put a menu on all of my pages (say 200+ products) and then I need to change that menu for whatever reason, I will have to change it over 200 times. Does that make sense?

So my question is this: Is there a way to have a master menu that will load on all of my store/item pages? What I want is to be able to change one thing, one time and then have it automatically update to all the other pages, instead of manually updating all my product pages (say 200 times or so). Doing it manually will surely drive me NUTS (and take forever).

Am I making sense? Sorry if I am confusing to understand. If you want to take a look at my store and see what I am talking about here is a link: http://www.envirotek.biz/store.htm
Please note: I am not trying to promote my store, I just want some help. Take a look if my inability to express myself has confused you.

Thanks in advance for any help you guys can lend.

Hello envirobay;

If I understand you correctly, you want a dropdown menu with a sub menu which list your products and with the ability to change any part of the sub menu on the fly.

If this is correct, to undertake a task as such you will need CSS as Carol suggested and probably a Java Script to handle the onLoad event process for the links to work.

Unless you are up to date on CSS 2 and Java Script I would suggest you take a look at this site: www.javascriptkit.com. and not try to undertake the task of writing the CSS. Once you get a script you like it is very easy to edit the CSS to change the menu, it's just a matter of locating the area of the menu you want to change and follow suite.

You can do what you are trying to do and you can change the menu simply by editing the CSS file which will be your menu.

If you are running Firefox you can edit the CSS in the browser with the EDIT CSS extension and see the changes you make first hand without having to reload the text.css file and check it with each change.

Hope this helps.

Dooley

memfoamfurniture · Joined: 29 Sep 2005 Posts: 301 Location: Wisconsin

First off you have some really cool stuff on your site! Second, we understand why you would want to add drop down menus. Make sure that is what you want because search engines can only read text links. If you do decide to do this, make sure you put some sort of site map on the bottom of every page. We have a program called drop down wizard that is pretty easy to use. Just PM us your email and we'll send you a copy of it for nothing.

LurkeyLou · Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2005 2:04 pm Post subject:

Just wanted to add to Dooly's recommendation for a FireFox extension. It has the edit CSS, along with scads of other very useful web developer tools...it's called Web Developer by Chris Pedrick...or Pederick... and it's nothing short of amazing!

envirobay · Joined: 17 Nov 2005 Posts: 624 Location: Boise, Id

Thanks to all who replied to my question. I have been so busy I have not had time to try anything out just yet. I thought I was going to have more time to work on my site after the holidays? :)

psunite · Joined: 27 Jan 2005 Posts: 6213 Location: Columbus OH

envirobay and knappschiles
It looks like you guys are starting from scratch when making your sites. If you don't do it properly with css and include header pages and database backends you are going to be spending a lot of your time updating and maintaining your website. You should try some of the premade shopping cart software out there like cubecart, oscommerce, or zencart.

I just created this template for my zencart based store and it didn't take long at all.
http://www.cashforyourgames.com/zencart/

If you go with a any of the above shopping cart software let me know if you need help making a template or you can use any of the ones that I have made.

teapotdee · Joined: 28 Sep 2005 Posts: 550

A page that loads in an iframe with a set of links (the list of 200 products?) gives you only one page to change.

It can scroll.

CSS is a mark-up language similar to html. It is not hard to learn, but teaching it is time-consuming because it requires learning a different way of thinking.

It does not solve all problems but it certainly does give better control and "cleaner" design. I mix it in with html so that my clients can use more familiar html to get their basic updates in, but as we go along, I can insert more CSS to keep the site manageable and enhance searchability.

CSS will allow you to do things like change the decorative elements throughout a site from one color scheme to another with a single code change.