Client updates part of one page - update copied toentire entire site?

[podgey]

Hi there,

I reckon this can't be done with Contribute 3 alone, but does anyone know of
another way this can be done?
I've designed a site which uses dreamweaver templates for a client - All fine
there.
On one DW template based page, the client wants to be able to periodically
update a series of 6 photos, and captions, but would like this change to
automatically update all other pages which include these photos and captions -
possibly (80 - 100).

At the minute, if I update the DWT , the changes are copied through to all
dependant pages. The client would prefer to make these changes himself , and
would also prefer to not have to purchase Dreamweaver to edit templates.

Is there any workaround to this?

I know i could probably ask him to just replace the photos on the server with
new ones of the same name, but what about the captions?

thanks!

[christina.heikkila]

Sounds like a job for SSI (Server-Side Includes).

You'd create either one SSI file (if the 6 photos and captions are always
shown together in exactly the same way), or one for each image if you want to
have the option of each image being shown on other pages independently. The SSI
file is just a section of html that is put in a separate file. Name them
generically, ie image1.ssi, image2.ssi, etc. Then in the actual webpages,
you'd have a bit of code that imports the SSI file(s) you want displayed on
that page. Your client would edit the actual SSI file in Contribute, swapping
in a new image and modifying the caption. If he did this in the file
image1.ssi, for example, it would automatically change the image shown on all
webpages that use image1.ssi.

You could also put everything that is currently in your templates -
navigation, headers, footers - anything that is supposed to be on every page -
into SSI files. Then your client could update these without buying DW. We use
a combination of DW templates and SSI files that works extremely well for us.
I've described it in other posts, if you want to read more.

[podgey]

Hi Christina,

Thanks for the reply - very clearly explained. I'll look into them when I next get a chance.