More than just a pretty face

Websites today are rarely just text and images slapped on a web server. There’s client-side scripting to enhance the interface, server-side scripting to construct pages on the fly and pull in information from databases; all with pixel perfect layouts created using cascading styles. Oh yes, there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes these days.

Or at least there should be. It’s true, that if you only have a small brochure site with content that doesn’t change very often, then you’ll be able to get away with almost no programming. However, if your site contains a main menu that’s visible on every page, or a footer that’s the same everywhere, you should at least be using server-side includes to pull a single instance of this code into the pages that need it.

If that's all too much jargon; just make sure your web developer’s aware of how to reuse chunks of programming in multiple pages. This way if you need to make a change to your menu, you’ll only need to make it in one place.