Site rebuild

From: novus (whitehat_at_alphalink.com.au)
Date: 03/02/04 

Date: Tue, 2 Mar 2004 16:14:17 +1100

I have a large web site (several thousand pages) with constantly changing
content that requires updating numbers of times per day. Much of this
content is "included" across numbers of pages. I make heavy use of scheduled
includes and nexted include pages.

I have recently upgraded (W2K -> XP, FP2000 -> FP2003) and want to use this
a an opportunity to rebuild the site from the ground up I would appreciate
any advice, both in general, but also on the following topics.

a) Maintain on local PC - publish to ISP (with FP extensions)
I have 56K connection and although each publish is slow, I thought I would
stick with this (optimising the HTML a litlle during the publish.

b) Use Dynamic Web Templates throughout.

c) Possibly use Access DB to replace much of what I currently do with
include pages and scheduled include pages. However there may be speed
issues. A typical page (eg What's on April 4th) would draw content of say 12
short paragraphs (currently stored as small include pages). The adavantage
of sticking with includes is that I can easily include internal hyperlinlks.
I am comptetent in both FP and Access but haven't used the 2 together. i
don't wish to learn CGI or other languages at this stage.

d) Possibly look at making more use of navigation shortcuts - eg multi-level
drop down menus - pozsibly using J-bots

e) Stick with FP conventions where possible (themes, navigation etc) even
though they don't always give the most elegant look and feel.

Any siuggestions will be be welcome.

novus

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