I'm in the final stages of 'deframing' a web site. I have a 'demo' up and running and am waiting for the site owners to give the go ahead. At the moment their comments are about the font sizes and colours (sigh!).

I'm convinced that frames are a bad idea but loosing them is a case of two steps forward and one step back. Each page now contains a top banner, navigation side bars, common footer etc. with the obvious difficulties that arise if you need to make any changes to these elements.

I've made a tentative first step. The site has extensive site maps (lists of links in chronological/alphabetical order - not unlike a 'Newest Nodes' type of arrangement). They are currently generated locally and FTPed to the web server. On the demo site these have been successfully loaded into a MySQL db and served up as required.

So far so good. What about serving up the whole site in such a manner?

One question is where to keep the content (articles) - in the db or as HTML files without the common elements? And jpegs/gifs? I'm leaning towards files. While the bulk of the aricles are straightforward there are many that, for example, include tables so the easiest way around that would be to have simplified, but valid, HTML files with the bare minimum of content.

A further constraint is that the owners (correctly) want to be able to post material themselves in as simple and straightforward a manner as possible (that means, sadly, MS FrontPage).

update:
They use MS FP to prepare the HTML. They don't use any FP extentions/jiggery pokery or use it to FTP the pages. They are never short of font/span tags though :-)

I envisage a setup where the CGI script would add all the necessary elements to each cut down page before serving it up. There would be an 'admin' script/form that would allow the files to be loaded on to the server, add a link to the home page and make necessary updates to the db e.g. file name, date, language, subject, category etc.. This would also mean the owners could update the website when they are away from the office (e.g. from home).

We could also avoid some <cough> synchronisation hicups between my local copy of the site and theirs, "you've overwritten my article!". I hadn't, but the link had disappeared from the home page :-)

The existing db would not need much work done on it. A further aim is to have 'breadcrumb' links at the top of each page which, in my opinion, is not feasable at the moment.

There would only be three 'updaters', four at the most. We have SSL.

Has anyone had experience with this sort of migration/process? I'd appreciate any comments/advice any monks may have.

Modules currently used:

(general)

(site maps) (keyword search) (send to a friend) (printer friendly)

In reply to OT: Migrating towards a Perl/MySQL/CGI website by wfsp

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