Prepare the Page

Like in Ready Your Site, the process of embedding news releases in you site is dependent on some preparation and choices. This Learning page will guide you though the process of preparing your site, and more specifically the page on which the embedded news content will appear, for the insertion of the requisite code for the News Release System.

1. Select the page. The first step in embedding is selecting a page into which you want to display the news content. This may be your homepage, a dedicated news or events page, or even a Dreamweaver MX library item. Have in mind not just which page, but where in the page you would like the news content.

2. Prepare a place for a table. The "templ.html" template, which controls how embedded content is displayed creates a table in your page that houses the titles and links to specific news release articles. You do not have to make a table, but you may want to set aside a particular portion of your page to accommodate this table.

   If your page contains navigational sidebars and headers in table form, reserve an empty table cell, at least 300 pixels across in the body or in a sidebar of the page.

   If the page does not have a table structure already, create a table with one row and one cell, specifying the maximum width of the table.

   This cell, in the former, and this table, in the latter, will be where you will insert the Server Side Include that runs the Perl script for embedding the news.

3. Ensure page can use Server Side Includes. Embedded news releases make use of Server Side Includes (SSI) to generate the news content dynamically. This allows the visitor to your site to see the relevant news releases displayed as they are added, with no additional effort on your part to maintain the list of releases.

   SSI needs to allowed on your site. Two ways of doing this are making the .html file executable or renaming the file .shtml. The latter option is simpler, but if the page you want to link to is already linked to by other pages and renaming it is not a feasible solution. Please follow the tutorial for Enabling SSI.

Once you have a place on a page prepared for the insertion of the embedded news releases, and you have allowed that page to execute an SSI on your page, you may then proceed to the Learning page, Program the Script, to create the code needed to embed the news on your page.