I am wanting to change my homepage from a forum to a actual index page. I am wanting it to be similar to these:

http://www.global-rs.com/
http://runescape.salmoneus.net/
http://www.tip.it/runescape/

 

Basically I want a nice header on top, navigation on the left, news feeds in the middle, and then misc stuff on the right.

I am not sure if it would be best to make a content management system for
this. Or to use something like this
http://www.sitefundamentals.com/include-menu-header-footer-web-pages/
which takes the header.html, footer.html, nagivation.html etc and just
calls it on each page.

I am going to have over 200 different pages that I will need to create so If I make a change to the navigation
I don't want to have to change the navigation on all 200 pages.

How would you do it/what do you think would be the best?

for that kind of website u need a decent cms (wordpress,joomla,drupal,modx) along with a forum (bbpress,mybb etc)

I am going to have over 200 different pages that I will need to create so If I make a change to the navigation

I don't want to have to change the navigation on all 200 pages.

 

A CMS might be a good way to do it, but you don't have to make it that complicated.

 

Use a PHP "include" for each of the header, nav and footer then create all your 200 pages with a different filename and a .php extension, then each page will include the same header, footer and nav but have different content. You can then make the nav show the current page with a different style if you use the "matched pairs" principle (items 2 and 3 on http://www.wickham43.net/highlighthome.php ) or PHP (item 4 on the previous link).

 

The news feeds in the middle, and then misc stuff on the right could also be PHP "include" files if you want those to repeat on every page. See http://www.wickham43.net/serversideincludes.shtml for PHP "include" files where only one file is created and then included in other pages so you only have one file to edit for any change.

 

A CMS is useful if you want someone else (who does know any coding) to edit a page so that he/she can have a separate username and password and only have access to certain parts of a page, but if you are the only person editing pages, then you may not need a CMS.

Edited April 14, 201313 yr by Wickham

I agree with Wickham, a PHP include would be the easiest way to create global page sections. Unless your regularly updating these pages a CMS may be overkill.

Actually to me 200 pages is a wholeee lot to create manually and then write the content directly inside the html code i personally think wordpress would be a good idea if your going to have that many pages

Another vote for WordPress here.

So basically if I use the PHP method I can have a lot of flexibility but I would have to create all pages manually.

 

If I go with the WP method I just have to paste the content inside the HTML box and thats it.

Thats basicially it 2007rs,

 

With WordPress you have the flexibility as well as the content management. You can also include a forum (there's a plugin for almost every situation) so you could still have that functionality as well.

 

The only thing about WordPress is, you need to make sure you have the latest version (its very easy to update... click of a button actually) and keep the plugins up to date (again, just a click of a button to update them)

 

Actually, using any open course script, you should always keep it updated with latest versions so you have the most up to date security patches etc.

 

So, em, yeah, a vote for WordPress from me.

You can use Minorit utility. You can have same content in all sites and change it from one place. More here: http://www.minorit.com

 

Try using google

Any need for that comment?

Edited May 11, 201313 yr by JackDanielTracy

How about about a smarty template based website