Are iframes still widely in use today?
I am coding a site with divs, and I want everything to appear in the container div. Is it possible to do it without coding the header + nav into each page and have the content show at the exact same spot without using iframes?
I did a quick Google search and found a post that said it's not possible, but my site will have quite a bit of links.
As of right now, I am coding it with Tumblr, and the hashtags in the posts would act as links to a section of posts (Ex: #blog would retrieve every post under the "blog" link). What are some widely used ways to target links on a website?
If you are creating a multi-page website, it would be helpful to have the HTML content be generated dynamically or be built statically from template files. You don't want to manually update the same content across multiple HTML files.
Dynamic Pages
There are several options for dynamically generating HTML content depending on the software available to you. For example, PHP is a popular language for web development and is available through many web hosts.
Static Pages
It is possible to build static HTML documents from templates using something like Jekyll.
I'm not sure if I'm interpreting what you mean by "coding it with Tumblr" correctly or not, but I think you mean you're making a Tumblr site with their built-in HTML editing capability.
I think you'll have a very difficult time achieving the behavior you desire there. I think you're trying to create something resembling a single-page application. Tumblr probably just allows basic static HTML with little Javascript. The suggestion Kyle made about using PHP or something like that won't work because that code must be executed on a server, and Tumblr doesn't provide that capability to my knowledge.
If you really want this kind of functionality, you probably should get some paid web hosting and develop your web development skills. It's not a simple task, but it's fun!
Sorry if I underestimated you or anything. Just trying to read between the lines. It seems to me that you may be relatively new to web development given the content of your post, and I'm trying to nudge you in the right direction constructively.
Related
On almost every website, they have various pages, each having the same HTML code. I strongly doubt that the creators of the websites edit the HTML code of each page, especially when users can make their own pages (like redditors making their own subreddits). These two pages from wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesizer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drum_machine are different pages but they have very similar html code
And I don't even need to have users create their own pages, I just need to have multiple pages that reuse html code. https://www.apple.com/mac/ https://www.apple.com/ipad/ are clearly different pages that have different html code, but I don't think the developers would copy and paste HTML code, change it, then change the code of the headers in each page to include the new page when they have a new product.
https://getbootstrap.com/docs/4.3/getting-started/introduction/ and https://getbootstrap.com/docs/4.3/examples/ are different pages that use the same html code. What do they use? Should I learn bootstrap? I've seen websites do this way before bootstrap was made, though. What's something like this called? Do they even write in HTML or do they write in something that compiles into HTML? How am I supposed to do this very simple task that every webdev knows how to do yet I am unable to find any information on it?
I've tried searching for "Reusing HTML code" but I found nothing that answers my question. All I've seen are special cases
I'm hoping with this, I'll be able to have a website that can have multiple pages that use the same basic HTML code. If I wanted a new tab, I won't have to edit the HTML code of each page.
What you described is achieved by HTML templates and server-side scripting. The server script injects data in your HTML template, thus reusing one template for any number of pages. A template may consist of multiple parts that can be combined to achieve similarly looking yet different pages. It is called dynamic HTML.
Here is a very basic tutorial on how it works: https://www.php.net/manual/en/tutorial.php
To create a modern website you need to use a dozen different technologies together. Here is an infographic to give get idea: https://codeburst.io/the-2018-web-developer-roadmap-826b1b806e8d
They are many ways to do it!
If you are using asp.net you can use master page.
For more info : Master page demo
or else you can use php "include" statement. Suppose you created one page as header.php(header.html) and other one as footer.php(footer.html), then you just have to include those pages.
eg
<?php include 'header.php';?>
<html>your web page</html>
<?php include 'header.php';?>
Well this question is so extremely general it's hard to answer without knowing what your goal is. I highly doubt there are any web developers that develop a website from scratch anymore. Most use a content management system (CMS) which uses server side scripting to serve HTML pieces to form a website. For example header, footer, content-body I don't mean the HTML tags header and footer, although they will be part of the pieces the CMS serves. The most popular content management system is Wordpress, which is built in php. The pages don't even need to be specifically designated, they can be a list of blog posts, a picture gallery ...etc . There are many different CMS packages that serve different purposes and depend on your requirements. Wordpress is in my opinion the simplest with the lowest learning curve and is quite powerful, especially with all of the templates and plugins available. Wordpress itself is free and there are many free templates to start from. However, there are paid templates and plugins that offer additional features. The only thing that you need is php support and a hosting site.
All you need to know can be found here - https://codex.wordpress.org/Getting_Started_with_WordPress
Other content management systems include Joomla, Drupal, Magento, PrestaShop, TYPO3. Each have their advantages and disadvantages, as well as varying support for plugins and templates. Some are designed to support eCommerce sites, such as PrestaShop and TYPO3 but most CMS libraries provide support for eCommerce through plugins and templates.
Bootstrap is a framework, which is a little different from a CMS, but it offers a similar functionality. It serves different pieces or containers you design to form a website or page.
I recommend starting with Wordpress and if you have more specialized needs, check out the other options. I don't recommend you start writing php code to serve pages unless you are a very experienced php coder and even in that case why would you want to if there are so many free open source tools that have already done this for you.
We have a web app that we want to integrate in the websites of several clients by a subdomain, since in most cases we cannot modify their webs. Besides, our web is build in a different language and we want to keep it in our servers.
At the moment, they are adding links on their site's menu to our subdomain, however, they want to keep the same header and the footer so that the user feels that they are on the same website.
For now, we are copying the html and inserting it in our template, but this is not a good solution for the future and we are having several problems due to javascript conflicts.
How can we solve this? An iframe does not allow us to modify its content, I think. Thanks in advance.
Don't know any good ways to do this client side.
First thought is to have all the pages link your Javascript to create the header/footer, but it's not good to require Javascript to display content.
HTML imports would really be perfect for this, but it not well supported. You can consider if you're willing to use a polyfill, like Google's webcomponents.
I feel like best approach here would be to do this somehow not on client side. Either use a server that lets you use a template engine, or some static site generator that supports templating.
A local nonprofit needs a new website. It's a very basic website that simply presents information, nothing past basic HTML/CSS is needed to make the actual site.
The marketing manager would like to be able to edit text sections (upcoming events, jobs) regularly. How would I go about creating the site in HTML/CSS and then allowing them to edit just the text in those sections in an easy way? is that even possible, or would this require more advanced knowledge of actual programming/database languages?
Thanks
No, you can't edit the site with just HTML and CSS. Even if you have JavaScript, you'll need server side code (ASP.NET, PHP, Ruby on Rails, Node.js etc) to store the changed text, since HTML, CSS, and JS run on the client (excluding server side JavaScript based frameworks).
The easy solution is to just use simple HTML and tell him to directly edit the HTML. If he's just a little bit technical, an hour or two of explanation of how HTML works might be enough to get you going.
A CMS solution that is prebuilt and has simple menus for editing things might work nicely. There's plenty of various options to suit your needs.
Otherwise, you can either build a custom site. A custom site that reads text from simple text files might be all it takes (Markdown might be preferable to plain text.) Of course, you can scale it up if you want until you've basically built your own CMS.
You can't do that.
HTML pages are stored on a server (which is just a computer accessible by other computers via an internet connection), when you type in an address in your browser's address bar it sends a request to a server to fetch the corresponding HTML page. Then this page is displayed in your browser.
Now, say you managed to change a text in your browser somehow using HTML/CSS, but you still need to find a way to send these changes back to the server so that these updated pages are accessible by other remote browsers, and the only way of doing this is to use server side languages. They are not really that difficult, you can quickly learn that.
You might like to take a look at this sourceforge project.
This is a file-based system that uses conventional HTML for the webpages, but allows online editing with CKEditor. Requirements are Apache 2 and php 5.3 or later.
There is a testdrive available.
Login with guest.
I'm trying to create a theme for a CMS, but it's proving nearly impossible, as I have no understanding of PHP or ASP.NET. I can put a site together via CSS and HTML, but I want clients to be able to add and edit content themselves. I'm about ready to give up on designing one altogether and just use an existing theme.
I've had a go at trying to understand the inner workings of Wordpress, SilverStripe, Umbraco and Pixie, but the tutorials have left me confounded. Are there other CMSes I should be looking into for a more simplified theming process?
I'd really love to be able to just drop a chunk of code into the content area of a given HTML page, and make that region editable from a WYSIWYG front end that the client can log into. Is there such a thing?
Anything but DotNetNuke.
I'd recommend giving Wordpress another try.
I'm no web developer, just a an average Java/C# programmer who needed a web site and has some basic knowledge of HTML and CSS. What I did was find a theme that was similar to what I wanted, then started tweaking it incrementally. My theme is pretty basic, but before long I got a pretty good grasp of "The Loop" and printing out category and page links and such.
How about Movable Type?
You can (and should) edit the templates via the web interface, they are divided into separate modules, so you can concentrate on one area of the site, styling is of course handled via CSS.
It took me a few hours without any prior experience with this CMS to completely port a Wordpress theme to MT - I found the documentation very helpful and didn't even have to look elsewhere.
An awesome thing about MT - it generates static pages based on the templates you defined. Meaning, very low load on the server, you don't need to query the database on every request, etc. You could probably do the same/similar by activating the cache plugin (or is it built in now?) in Wordpress, but here it's the default modus operandi so it's more stable and integrated with the CMS.
Drupal with the zen theme (or a "lighter" version of it: Starkish theme) seems like a popular choice (and well deserved, too). It gives you a good starting point, it has great documentation and many modules available.
PS: I've added this as an additional answer so that it can be voted upon separately from my other suggestion - I just could not stop myself from bringing up the Drupal + zen combo :)
I worked with Joomla, it is really easy to have a theme for it without knowing any programming language. When you install it using a simple installer, there will be a folder named templates. There are three simple themes each in its own folder. Just copy one of them,change XML data for that theme ( just to name it and have some details, no programming ) and change the contents of CSS and HTMLs. every where you see something unrelated to HTML like , copy them!! Names are descriptive. so you can guess what do they do. give it a try!
I'd really love to be able to just drop a chunk of code into the content area of a given HTML page, and make that region editable from a WYSIWYG front end that the client can log into. Is there such a thing?
The only system I've come across with this kind of functionality is Perch.
Just create your website using HTML/CSS as usual and chuck in a few small php tags where you want editable content. These areas are then added to an admin area for your clients to edit.
The only drawback is it costs £35 per site - I don't know if there's a free/open-source CMS with this functionality...
It's difficult to say which CMS will be the best one for you (maybe your question should be made into a community wiki question).
I have a little experience with mojoPortal, and found it to be easily customizable. There's a lot of documentation about how to skin your CMS and there a lots of complete skins that you can use as a starting point.
There is also a demo site, where you can see how the CMS works for an end-user.
Take a look at Joomla. That was the first CMS that I really used, and I still think its templating engine is better than most of the others out there.
Its template system essentially lets you build a standard web page, and then use some simple tags to define where the content and modules would go. You can override the output of most external components and modules without too much trouble, and the vast library of third-party extensions should help you add a ton of functionality to your site without much coding on your part. Joomla also has a fairly easy-to-use administrative backend, so your clients should like it too.
This page for themeing Wordpress helped me a lot:
Theme Development
UPDATE
Xichael,
If you know HTML and CSS pretty well, but you just don't want to spend time learning the Wordpress framework, then I think this is a good option for you (again, I can relate to your situation). Use Wordpress with the new Toolbox starter theme. It's super minimal.
Toolbox: An HTML5 WordPress Starter Theme
Here's an example of what it looks like. Just "View page source" and go to town on the CSS!
I've thought about writing my own very simple CMS just for handling pages, i.e. you have some sort of template, and then a <div> in the middle to drop in text from a WYSIWYG editor. You could even use XML as the data store to eliminate having to set up a database to store the page content.
It would sort of be re-inventing the wheel though, because there is so much polished CMS software out there already, but it wouldn't be that hard because it wouldn't have 99% of the features most systems have. However, what happens when your client wants to add something in the future that's already standard in an existing CMS or plugin?
If you are looking for a simple CMS tool, CMSimple is as basic as it gets. A small PHP based CMS system that does not even require a database or XML.
"CMSimple is the ideal tool for a single user to maintain a website."
Original version here: CMSimple.ORG
Original plus 2 enhanced versions here: Download CMSimple
117KB content manangement system
no database required; the entire site is stored in a single HTML file
built in WYSIWYG
no modules or widgets, no blog, no comments, etc., just basic pages
uses PHP (but no database)
Get themes here: dotcomwebdesign.com
My company (an engineering firm) is looking to redesign their website with some dynamic content. We have a nice portfolio of projects that we'd like to present on our site by category.
To elaborate, I'd like to have a "Projects Category" menu, where you can choose a sub-project category (such as churches, schools, etc) which links to a page with images of all projects which have been tagged with that category attribute. Clicking on an image would then take you to a detailed page for that project.
I have done a good bit of asp and jsp page development, but I've always worked on the front end in an enterprise environment - I've never built a production site from the back end. The advice I've gotten so far is that a full-blown CMS solution would be somewhat overkill, as we won't have a large hit count, and we'll be displaying a few hundred projects at most.
One big-picture choice I appear to have - whether to dynamically generate the pages (with asp or jsp) or to use a tool to generate a set of static html pages. The tool would build the menus, project summary pages, and individual project pages based on a set of data I could provide (in the form of a database or text file.)
I'm leaning towards trying to use a tool like webgen or webby to statically generate the site due to our current web hosting situation. Any thoughts on which approach is more appropriate? Is webgen or webby capable of doing what I am trying to do? Or can anyone recommend other web authoring tools better equipped to accomplish this?
Thanks for any feedback!
You could always use Template Toolkit :)
Jekyll may be worth a look.
Refer: https://github.com/jekyll/jekyll/wiki/
I've been told that webgen can't do what I'm trying to do (without some manual coding extensions myself) but that nanoc can.
http://nanoc.stoneship.org/