HTML/Web Question about navigational menu
 

Hello People,
I am curious how to have a side menu and different text/context on all of my pages without loading the menu every time or placing it in the code of every page. (And of course not using frames)
The page in question is http://www.torlian.com/
not trying to get any traffic from here or anything like that, just trying to figure out how to do this in the most economical and effecient fashion possible so I can get to the final 'finished look' overall and keep updates and maintenance easy.

I do know of and have used several HTMl/CSS support type forums but am really unsure of what to look for here.

Any help or suggestions is greatly appreciated - I am sure this a simple thing.

latest edit: minor addition

If I'm understanding you correctly, it sounds like you want to have dynamic pages and content. You may want to look into either jsp or php. Those are probably your best options.

yes that sounds right.
Sounds like a good time to delve into learning some PHP then. Thank you.

...and if you're going to steal Slashdot's menu, you might consider at least changing the color of the roll-overs.

excellent point - I found the menu here and changed nothing about the look. The author on that site obviously copied Slashdot verbatim in appearance. I will play with it to retain the functionality, make it more 'original looking' in colours, etc, and will of course be giving all due credit (that is way beyond me on both the CSS and JS level).My simple old menu is still on parts of the site and nowhere near as slick or handy.

edit: tonight was my first look at slashdot in some time...
"This is a stylish collapsible menu modelled after the navigational menu found on Slashdot." must mean "This is an exact duplicate stealing the look" :orly:

One last post here before this gets buried:
Thank you very much kofspades for pointing out the obvious that the menu as currently up (as of 4 july 08) is in serious need of some tweaks/changes; I have no desire to make a mirror image of the menu on a very well known site.

Thank you very much spectre for mentioning PHP, this finally gave me cause (actual motivation) to really look at it and I already have a basic understanding of where I am going now after looking at the always helpful w3schools website.
just the kind of help I was looking for :bowdown:

Glad to be of help. Good luck and let us know how everything goes. :)

so far the small details of PHP are frustrating me in the relatively short amount of time I am setting aside for this work in the evening, but I will figure it out.
Once I get the basic form down, the rest of the work will fall quickly like dominoes.

to be more specific, I can see the menu in the PHP file when accessed directly by name (no other content on page), but am having difficulty with the PHP files that are said dynamic content seeing it.
edit: the first page works now :) , I will stop posting boring details and using this thread for a chatroom .

Just a quick update.....
The 'Slashdot Menu' thing was an ongoing pain in many respects that was eventually dumped in favour of tables :eek: styled with CSS. At least the table works in all browsers (at least IE 6, I cannot test anything older than that here) which was definitely NOT true for the SD menu after it received some needed fixes pointed out to me by a friend running *nix and non-FF/Opera browsers.
Finally getting back to adding actual content rather than f**king with an array of stupid menus that all use Javascript.

Not that anyone probably cares, but I did just upload the contents of a JFK tribute LP from 1964 or so.
edit: the table will very likely be replaced with an unordered list helped with CSS and PHP, but the look will not change.