Page 2 - Is it OK to use FRAMES for a site?

I DID IT!!!!!!!!!!!!! YAY

HAHA

This rocks. Thank you guys SO MUCH for all the help. I figured out the rest, about making my own IF statement for the main index.php load cuzz $page has no value upon first load.

THen the links use kravvitz' think and it works.

THANKS!

MasterMinds - make sure you limit the possible page values. Don't let any page request go through. There are a number of php worms taking advantage of sites that do that.

Hi. Let me see if I get this right.

Ok basically, upon the original index page load $page has NO value at all. I used an IF statement to say that if page has no value, then use $page = page1.php

Then what happens is, if page does have a value (from the url obviously) it uses that value.

Here is my original IF then - done out of the blue just from guessing, since I don't do PHP - although I guess now thanks to this thread I sort of do



Ok. So now I need to tell it firstly that I allow other values, and say that if it has this other value send it here, so far I offer values page1.php and page2.php



Ok that is my wild guess. It allows only the values i put in the function - and will redirect to tubgirl if someone tries to mess with it

ok anyways - I am guessing the shorter way is to use some statement that sasy "if $page does equal this, or this, or this etc.. then..."

I just dunno that syntax since I'm not a programmer

Lemme know the critique Simon thanks!

isn't it better to use switch instead a bunch of if-statements?

something like http://no.php.net/manual/en/control...witch.php#30037

That's going to get so painful when you get lots of pages. It's probably better to use a switch statement as Akh said - and have a default: entry to just direct somewhere safe. You can also use in_array(), which I discussed in this thread.

Cheers,
Simon

EDIT: Learned how to use switch and got it to work. THANK YOU GUYS! I learned a lot from this thread, damn.

Hello,

I highly recommend using PHP includes for this type of site. I have multiple sites running in this fashion. Create a main index.php page that will hold your menu and then create a table that will serve as a container for your information. When the user selects things from the menu pass them back to the index.php page with HTTP variables liek this.

index.php?pageID=news

The news will be able to load in the 'main table' table of your site without having to reload the rest of the index.php page (i.e. headers, footers, menus, copyright info, etc)

Here is a sample of the code used on the index.php page to include the rest:

MCowboyE19, you are mistaken about how it works. It reloads the entire page, it just has the other files in cache so those don't have to be downloaded again.

Their is no requirement to use tables. Tableless layouts can work fine with includes as well.

Wouldn't it be easier to use TheJim01's solution?

cowboy - this is what I am doing, thanks to all the help in this htread. thank you for the suggestion, i love these php includes and vars.inc and template.inc and the switch thingie.

so much good stuff i can do from those now.

Ive tried this for my index.php:



<?
require('intro.html');
require('header.html');
require('leftnav.html');

/********** Load Main Content **********/

$page = $HTTP_GET_VARS["page"];

if($page==null)
{
@include'body.html';
}

else
{
if(file_exists($page))
{
$page = "$page";
@include($page);
}
else
echo"Error: Could not include Page.";
}

/********** End Main Content **********/

require('footer.html');
?>

as well as this:

<?
require('intro.html');
require('header.html');
require('leftnav.html');

/********** Load Main Content **********/

if($page == '')
{
$page = "body.html";
}

$pagename = $_GET['page'];

//***** patching hole allowing external pages being loaded
//***** compatible with PHP 3, 4, & 5
$myfiles = array();
$ismine = false;
$thisdir = opendir('./');
while(($file = readdir($thisdir)) !== false){
if($file == $pagename){
$ismine = true;
}
}
closedir($thisdir);
//***** end patch

if($pagename == '' or $ismine == false){
$pagename = 'body.html';
}

require($pagename);

/********** End Main Content **********/

require('footer.html');
?>

But either way, if I address the URL without passing a $page variable, then I get an

Notice: Undefined index: page in c:\easyphp\www\index.php

error in the output, if I midify the URL with the variable, then there is no error???

Any ideas?

All help is greatly appreciated, thanks in advance...

This is a php issue, please ask php questions in the PHP Develmpent forum...

You got plenty of responses on implementing PHP or SSI includes, which is the way I'd go myself. Back to the question:

Q: Is it OK to use FRAMES for a site?

A: No. Here's why: when you use frames you load a file that in turn loads the framesets. However, when search engines bot the site they aren't necessarilly aware of the frames and therefore, if someone finds your site on a search they are likely to hit only that page, which won't load the frames, and thus your navigation is also lost.

I host a site for a friend of mine and despite my pointing this out to him he is reluctant to change it. I setup a dynamic site for him, but being not very savvy with things he wanted to just use his website designer tool (whatever he's using). When I look at his weblogs, it's painful. Thousands of hits to specific pages from searches which, of course, don't have the navigation to the rest of the site.

Presently I'm trying to talk him into figuring out how to turn those frames into includes with his program. *sigh*