So you have always heard there is no such thing as a stupid question but that isn't quite true. There are stupid questions and there are even stupid answers.

In this forum we encourage you to ask questions, even if you think it might be a silly question or too simple. Every one of us started out somewhere and those who answer questions started off by asking them. This forum is primarily for questions about Expression Web but we don't plan on being really strict unless people wander off too far, then we'll suggest you take it to the coffee house.

So step up, ask you questions and we promise not to laugh (too hard).;-)

Ok, I'm game what is an "include" ?  I've made several websites and don't know what it is, I also don't know what DWT is?

Thanks,

Mema

An iclude is a separate web page that content you want to use in more than one place on your website. Probably the most comon use for an include is a menu or a submenu.

Let's say you have a website with regulars who contribute articles. For each of your regular contributors you have a block of text with their name, picture and a couple of lines of text about them. You could create each person's blurb as an include. Then when their blurb is updated you change just the short little page that contains that person's blurb. When you save it all of the pages that contain the blurb will be updated with the new information.

There are two types of includes. One if handled inside of Expression (or FrontPage, in Dreamweaver library items are similar) which are called design time includes. After you save your changes you must publish every file that was updated. If you let Expression handle the syncrhonizaton of the files you don't have to know which ones were updated.

Advantage: no server side technology needed, desugb tune includes are independent of the server.

The other type is server side includes where you upload only the changed file because the content is included by the server not by Expression.

Advantage: speed but you don't see the included content in Expression Web when you are editing.

Let me be sure I'm understanding, I write a little web page with information that is included on several pages, and somehow I point to that little web page, and when I need to make a change I change the little web page and it will show the changes on every page I pointed to it on.  Is this right?  How do I point to the little web page in the bigger web page?  Or am I still not getting it?  I just got expressions yesterday so I'm going to load it on my laptop to try to learn it, I've also made a copy of my websites to use to play with converting them over to Expressions. 

Will I need to change my web hosting, right now I have one that uses FP extensions and is a windows based server?

Thanks bunches,

Mema

Hi Mema

 You don't need to change your hosting. EW will work with FPSE (FrontPage Server Extensions or with FTP which ever you prefer. Just continue to do what you have always done.

 With Design Time Includes just open a blank page and insert your content. I find it best to stick all my include files into one folder which I call _inc
Then you need to 'include' that page page lets say it's a menu on each page of your site. If your using a DWT (Dynamic Web Template) you would insert the include into an editable area... and update the dwt and bingo it appears on all your pages that the dwt is attached too.

If not you just insert the include code and browse point to the page you just made and saved... see tutorials below on how to do this.

 For more information on DWTs read - it's best to read a tutorial to explain dwt's to the fullest. They are easy to do and save so much time on maintainance.

Free Ebook
http://frontpage-ebooks.com/dwt-ebook.htm

http://mvp.wiserways.com/tutorials/dwt/index.html

With Includes

http://anyfrontpage.com/ezine/va/frontpage-includes.htm

This was written for FrontPage but gives an explaination of what they are about.

In EW at present there is no Design Time Include addon, but there are two Design Time Include addons available or you can use the  .

 See DTI snippet workaround

http://by-expression.com/quick-bits/includes/

http://any-expression.com/expression-web/tutorials/insert-include-pages.htm

 The include addons are available from (both free)

http://www.panemanager.com/wumain/
http://liahona.org/fpbotmacro

 Tina

Take a look at the tutorials Tina gave you links to so you can see how to use includes.

To add to Tina's tutorials, here is one on Design Time Includes and Expression Web

http://www.genealogy-web-creations.com/expression-web-includes.html

I have been using the free addon from Pane Manager Tina referred to and it works great. The only strange thing about it, is it adds multiple listings on my menu for insert page and only the last one appears to work. Not sure if it is a bug in the program or something I am doing wrong. 

 

pat 

Cheryl or other moderators, feel free to move this or create a New Topic.

On the subject of includes, my site has a few articles (example) that the original developer set up to be generated from text inputted in an Access database.  (It just posts the text, which can include html formatting.)  By includes, this formatted text appears under a caption as an "Article."

In my first use of Expression, I updated my site's copyright year from 2006 to 2007.  SOMEHOW, a few days later, I learned that the articles' special characters (which had displayed correctly earlier, when I used Frontpage exclusively) now appear goofy with special Greek or international funky guys!  For the life of me, I can't find where | how this got mucked up.  The basic asap page with the includes looks the same, the private folder components show no evidence of weirdness, I even checked the actual database text and it remains unchanged.

The special characters now displaying weird are ones such as single and double curly quotes, (TM) and registered trademark symbols, EM dashes.  I know to how to use the full code (ex. ‘ for an opening single curly quote) where I can edit, but I don't have the opportunity to do this with the database include.

My theory is PERHAPS Microsoft Expression takes very seriously the doctype declaration that the original developer placed on the pages, but which was never understood and never applied.  (Our pages are definitely "Quirks" pages.)  

Any assistance would be appreciated.

Thanks all! 

I'd say you are running into the BOM - byte order mark issue, which I have confirmed by right clicking on the example page you linked to in IE 7 and changing the encoding to UTF-8 and the characters went away. A little experimenting with encoding show that there seems to be a mix of document encoding types. If I have it set to US/Western Europe I see the characters you are complaining about. If I set it to UTF-8 I see some rectangular characters.

My guess is when you updated you changed the encoding of some of the pages. from windows-1252 to UTF on pages that were updated since you are using ASP you must be on a Windows server which should not have problems with UTF-8 encoded pages. Add a UTF-8 Characterset declaration to html just below the opening <head> element  and use recalculate hyperlinks under the site menu. I think that will clear up your display issue. If not post back.

Doesn't include require front page extensions on the web server? Would it not be better to use <iframe ></iframe> to include another page? I use the following code to display events on my index.html page at http://gwrra-ca1f.org/.

<iframe name="InlineCalendar" id="InlineCalendar" src="http://www.localendar.com/public/crawfor?style=D2" 
style="width: 494px; height: 566px; float: center;" marginwidth="1" marginheight="1" 
border="1" frameborder="1">Your browser does not support inline frames or is currently configured not to display inline frames.</iframe>

I should be able to use the same method to add text from a CD_info.htm file to a page.   As an example... I have a page on the site for the 
Chapter Director to put his monthly information blog stuff. I want him to be able to add his information any time, without my help, and 
keep him from messing with the web site. I create a folder and give him FTP permission to only that folder. I create an <iframe></iframe> 
entry and put his CD_info.htm thingy in it. Now whatever he uploads gets on the website. 

No, do not use an iframe for any sort of included content. They have the same drawabacks as using a full framset.

Design time includes are added to your page before they are published. They do not require FPSE on the server.

Server-side includes do require the pages to be parsed on the server but you can use asp, asp.net or php to include them. If your server is configured for html includes you can also use html includes usually by saving the file with an shtml extension but you should check with your web host to determine whether that is an opiton.

Please expand on your statement. You say do not use.. have same drawbacks..

<iframe> is a valid tag and seems to work just fine for me. What drawbacks are you talking about?  

Please remember I am in the Newbie forum and probably don't even know enough to ask the right question. An opinion statement does not help me understand the mechanics.

Thanks for you help!

 

Biggest issue with iframes has to do with search engines. They index framed pages including iframes separately which means people can get just the iframe content w/o any of the rest of the page information.

There are also display issues if the person resizes the page or the text.

OK thanks for the explanation. The first problem can be taken care of with a little re-direct code that would send anyone coming to the iframe content page directly to the main page automatically.

I'll have to play around with and think about the resize issues.

 Aside from using iframe, do you know of another way to add content from an external source other than using include or iframe?
 

Not off hand.