Is is worth it converting Shared Borders to a Dynamic Template?

[Reddiance]

I'm trying to convert to my shared orders (which covers my entire website) to
a Dynamic Template that would be my top navigaton border, and have observed 2
things that I don't like. Once I removed the shared borders and then I
attached a dynamic template this is what I've noticed: (these are two, there
may be more that I'm not aware of)

#1 - My Page Background was removed. Not only that, but I can't add it. Page
bakground is important because not all pages on my site have the same page
backgound. Therefore, I can't have individualized page backgrounds for any
page I want.

#2 - When I removed the shared border I noticed that my metatags were also
removed: META NAME="description" CONTENT="..." <==REMOVED
META NAME="keywords" CONTENT=".." <==REMOVED.
Ok, no problem, I thought, since that was probably defined as part of the
shared border. I'll just add it to the Dynamic Template. Did that and it
worked on my main index.html. Then I attached another page to that main
template and viewed the source. The OLD Metatags, which were different than
the main ones on my main index.html, were now gone too. So now I see that I'm
losing the other meta tags from other pages as well.

Do I think it's worth changing to Dynamic Templates from Shared Borders? No!
There's just too many things to change and who knows what else! Comments are
welcomed! Thanks

 

[Thomas A. Rowe]

When converting a site to DWT, you need to start with new pages and apply the DWT, then you copy and
paste the content from your old pages. You can a unlimited number of DWTs with different
backgrounds.

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Thomas A. Rowe (Microsoft MVP - FrontPage)
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[Reddiance]

I read what you're saying...I have hundreds of pages, so that would be way
too much work for little benefit in return.

My point was that I thought with DWT's, I could just use one main template
and apply to it all my pages. If I need to make several DWT's then it defeats
the purpose of what I'm trying to do, so might as well stay with Shared
Borders.

But the other thing that troubled me was the way DWT's changed the meta
tags, or at least they weren't the same as when I had the Shared Border.

Sam Meilach

 

[Thomas A. Rowe]

True it is extra work in the beginning, but in the future you would only have to change a DWT, which
then would update all pages associated with the specific DWT.

The problem is that people think that a DWT can be applied to existing pages and somehow change the
format without affecting the current page content, this can only be done when the page was create
originally based on a DWT.

A DWT affects the entire page whereas shared borders only effect the top, bottom, left and right
areas of a page, it has no impact on the main content body of the page or any thing outside of the
body tags.

--
==============================================
Thomas A. Rowe (Microsoft MVP - FrontPage)
WebMaster Resources(tm)

FrontPage Resources, WebCircle, MS KB Quick Links, etc.
==============================================
If you feel your current issue is a results of installing
a Service Pack or security update, please contact
Microsoft Product Support Services:
http://support.microsoft.com
If the problem can be shown to have been caused by a
security update, then there is usually no charge for the call.
==============================================

 

[Ronx]

To retain the existing meta tags, in the DWT create Keywords and
Description tags and place them in an editable region. The DWT
usually creates an editable region for the page title - the meta tags
can also be placed in that same region. (See Code view). Doing this,
existing tags should not be overwritten or removed.

The page background can be inserted using CSS, either embedded in the
page or in an external style sheet. Again, using an editable region
for localised styles will enable the look of a page to be
individualised, while retaining the layout and other benefits from the
DWT.
Example:

<!-- #BeginTemplate "dwt/site.dwt" -->

<head>
<!-- #BeginEditable "doctitle" -->
<title>Page title goes here</title>
<meta name="keywords" content="keywords go here">
<meta name="description" content="Description goes here">
<!-- #EndEditable -->
<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-gb">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=ISO-8859-1">

<!-- BeginEditable "customstyles" -->
<style type="text/css">
body {background:url("images/back.jpg");}
/*other styles for this page*/
</style>
<!-- #EndEditable -->

In my opinion, the effort involved is worthwhile.