what's better than iframes?

Hi all,

I'm looking more for advice than a critique, really...

I have the task of maintaining a website for our department, but don't really have the software or expertise to do a snazzy job...

I need to make semi-frequent changes to the links in the header (ahh, the whims of administration!), so would like to use a common element instead of needing to change every faculty member page when altering the header layout.

I'm currently using iframes, which have several problems including leaving a space at the top, weird sizing issues, and the question of whether they will be supported in newer browsers.

Can someone tell me a better way to intoduce a common "header" onto a webpage?

http://www.has.vcu.edu/psy/faculty/mccullough.html

Thanks!
Scott

one word and one recursive acronym "php includes", you don't have to make a whole new html file for each thing, you can just have the bit of code that changes

Thanks for the quick reply, tree!

I'm afraid your reply was a bit too cryptic/brief/technical or something for me to understand... I've considered using PHP for the text for different faculty members, but for 2 reasons I've balked: 1. the time it will take for me to properly learn database management; 2. whoever takes my position next year will have no idea what I did.

I've also tried to do the page by embedding the html as objects. Oddly, you can clearly see the object starting to load (IE5-Netscape7 shows nothing), but then *poof* it disappears. This question goes beyond "critique-ing" but I would love some help!:

http://www.has.vcu.edu/psy/faculty/test_mccullough_object.html

Database management and php are different things... well sort of, php is kind of intendended to work with mysql DBs but there are plenty of things it can do without a db, goto w3schools and read what they say about php.

if your server supports it you could use SSI (server side includes) if you don't know php

Thread moved.

Well, I can't get it to work as an "object", even after taking the body, html, and head tags out of the htmlf.

I will try SSI, but in the end, for this project, I'll probably just leave it with iframes-I'm afraid the next webguy/gal won't be able to figure out what to do with them...

I found a simple intro to the code here:
http://webmonkey.wired.com/webmonkey/html/97/07/index2a.html

Thanks for the help!
Scott