Join html file constituents

Question

I've tried searching for this but couldn't find an exact response for my particular issue.

So I've made a friend a website and I am quite enjoying it - it has about 10 HTML files, 1 css, and 1 js file. The biggest irritation I've come across is this:

If I make one minor tweak to, let's say... the header... I have to do it among all html files, and it's quite annoying. I use one CSS file for the stylings, so it's just a matter of pasting on the html code 10 times.

I don't really know PHP, but I think it has a function to do something like this, but i don't want the index to be www.mywebsite.com/index.php (I want it to remain mywebsite.com - i.e. not showing index.html because of its name).

So that raises the question, is it possible to join the html constituents, like:

header.html body.html footer.html

in to one bigger file containing all three, with no special trickery, just copying the contents of each line by line? If so, can I do it without php? If so, or if not, could anyone please tell me how, and if there are any issues with this kind of approach let me know?

Thanks!

Answer 1

You should use php for including all your headers,footers etc. You can use it even if you do not have any knowledge about php. Follow the link here -> http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_includes.asp . The includes are server-side. When the user requests for your website, php copies all your includes and pastes it to the main-file and then sends data to the user.

For example

//the php file
<?php
 include "header.html";
 include "footer.html";
?>

The header.html file =>

<div class="header">...</div>

The footer.html file =>

<div class="footer">...</div>

The output =>

<div class="header">...</div>
<div class="footer">...</div>

Answer 2

If your webserver supports it, you can use server-side includes. Apache supports it but the Includes option must be set (Options +Includes in .htaccess).

<!--#include file="footer.html" -->

This would be the easiest way I can think to do this without scripting something using CGI, PHP, ASP, etc.