Hello. This is something that I've been struggling with forever. I'm trying to put ads on my site and grow the site at the same time. Obviously, having to change hundreds of pages everytime I want to change an ad would be undisirable. Is thier any way I can just put certain coding on all of my pages, so when I update a "master page", all of the images, and links on those images could change?

I can get easily update pictures to change on all of my pages with this technique but the url never changes????

very frusterating and confusing

Thanks in advance.

p.s. as well, I don't have a server that supports php (whatever that means, but it does support CGI)

thanks

webguy,

I'm not too sure there is anything you can do with just plain HTML unless you are willing to do a lot of cutting and pasting (which I assume you aren't).

PHP would definitely give you the functionality you need - that's mainly why I am posting to assure you that a solution is there if you are willing to change your hosting.

Others may be better versed in CGI than I --

Good luck!

Since you don't have PHP, there's two things I'd recommend.

1) Use Server-Side Includes (SSI) if you have that available. Wherever you want the ads to appear, put <!--#include virtual="current_ad.txt" -->. Current_ad.txt would have all the code you need for the ad. You may need to rename all your .html files to .shtml unless you or your host can make it so .html files are searched for SSI. (You'd need to create a .htaccess file to do that, or your host could do some configuring.)

2) Use Javascript. Create an external script to "write" the code to your page. You wouldn't need to rename your pages, but if your visitors have Javascript turned off then they won't see your ads. If the percent of visitors that have Javascript turned off is small, then it shouldn't be too big of a deal.

Of course, some one may have a better solution for you.

Edited to add: Kyrnt's post wasn't up when I started to reply. I'd give his suggestion to change hosts some consideration. PHP really does come in handy for a lot of things, and you can get it with even "bargain basement" prices.

thanks for you help guys. I've been looking throughout the rest of this forum and it really looks like PHP is the way to go. I don't have a clue how to use it, but I'm a smart guy and could probably figure it out pretty quickly. Anyways, I know this is probably the wrong forum to ask this question in, but could you recomend a host that is both affordable and supports PHP (plus good bandwith, little downtime etc). Sites preferably you guys have had good experiences with.

thank you

Well how much space/bandwidth are you looking for exactly?

check this forum out: http://webmaster-talk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=13

as of now, I have unlimited bandwidth but no php. I've looked around and most other servers have bandwith caps of 2gigs, 5gigs etc. I just don't know how this converts into visitors... arproximatley how many visitors is 2g, 5g etc. Obviously I'de like as much bandwith as possible. One of my sites gets close to 20,000 uniques per month and is growing pretty rapidly so I don't want to limit myself too much.

hmmm i cant answer that question for ya, could you post a link to your site

The number of visitors per 1GB bandwidth depends on what's on your site. A site with 20 5KB pages and 4 70KB jpegs will tend to use less bandwidth than a site with 20 70KB jpegs and 4 5KB pages. Figure out approximately how much bandwidth each visitor will use on average and divide that by the amount of bandwidth you have to get the approximate number of visitors you van have. If you think that an average visitor will use 200KB in one visit, then 5GB bandwidth will give you a little over 20,000 visitors.

I've got reseller accounts for my sites so I haven't dealt with many hosts lately. And with what you're going to use PHP for at first, it's really easy to "get" and use.