No Cost Website Planning

To start our plan we need to decide what parts or groups are going to be in the page and make a list of them. The reason for this is to allow you to set special styles for the different blocks and arrange them on the page as you desire. It also lets you decide if the same block will be on every page or just one page. When the block will be on every page then the editing of this block on every page is quite time consuming going to every page to make the changes. This can be made a lot easier if we use PHP includes. Using PHP includes means that we make a separate page with the content for the include and then in the place for the PHP included information on the page with all the blocks of information we place an include statement in the place we want the php included information to be and then the server places it there when the page is taken from the server. The result is that you can change one file and upload it with the changes and every page that it has been included in will automatically change to the new information. Keeping you from having to change each page. Don't worry if at this point you do not understand. This will become clear when we actually do it with the menu.

Blocks we will use:

1. Body

This will contain the whole visible page and control the pages background and over all width etc.

2. Content

our list of programs with their evaluations or the reviews of the program or the home page introduction or the about me page text and images will go here.

3. Header

This is for the label and anything else you desire to be with the site label on each page. Possibly a logo or motto that you want on each page.

4. Footer

Things located at the bottom of the page like page up links validation images, counter or stats keeper.

5. Headings

Paragraph titles or special title text for sections of text.

6. Newest reviews box

Here is where we will place notice of new programs and reviews.

7. Logo

Logo position using absolute positioning.

8. Menu box

This is for holding the navigation menu.

9. Menu

This is for navigation and will be a separate page which we will use a PHP include statement to place it on every page.

On every page we will use the following blocks Body, Content, Header, Footer, Logo, Menu and some Headings. We will use the Newest reviews box on just the home page. We will use NVU to create our Doctype statement and HTML structure for the page. Creating a page template to be used for each page of the website. The exception is for the menu page. For the menu page we will not use the template page nor will we use the Doctype statement. The menu page will be just the bare HTML needed for the menu itself since once it is included via the PHP statement it will be added to the HTML structure of the page it is included in.

TopStyle Lite will be used to set the CSS style for the entire site as an external style sheet and a link to this style sheet will be placed in the head section of every page except the menu page. Again this is because once the menu page is included it will be added to the HTML structure of the page it is included in and it's style will be defined by the style sheet the page is linked to just as the rest of the page.

Once the menu page is created if we need to edit it this will be done using NotePad++ since it will not make any automatic changes. NVU would always add the rest of the HTML structure which we don't want due to our using a PHP include statement.

NCW Planning