U-include help PLZ!!!

Hi there! I'm pretty much a novice web design, lol. Naturally I'm having a lot of trouble with frontpage's include webbot (aka U-include). I'm not sure if I'm understanding it right.

I'm under the impression that I can use U-include to create a portion of my site once and then just attach the portion (say, top.html, onto all my pages. When I want to change this portion up, I go to the original U-Include file (top.html), make the changes there and have the changes show up on every page that carries the U-include webbot. In theory.

The problem is that, each and every time, the U-include bots are changing into HTML text!!! So it's defeating their purpose. What am I doing wrong? It's driving me crazy! Please help.

Thanks in advance!!!

AG

Sorry to say, but that is a fault with frontpage... I believe your hosting provider has to have frontpage extensions installed and enabled for those to work... I'll have to check but I don't think I even have frontpage extensions as an option on my servers...

That being said... Simple includes using asp, asp.net or php are a better option all around.

They just display your code as you write it... Frontpage always had a bad habit of re-writing code it didn't like...

Thanks for the reply and sorry for my late response. How would I set up an php include? Should I create a normal html include file (i only have frontpage - hope to get dreamweaver soon) and then copy/paste onto a txt editor where I can save the file with a php extension? Or is there a simpler/direct way?

Any thoughts are welcomed! Thanks, again.

Yup, pretty much what he said...

I don't know if frontpage will let you do most of this stuff without trying to re-write everything for you...

Meant to reply sooner...but didn't get a chance. I understand if my make my main pages into php I can then include any file (html, php, js, etc). But I have a question as far as the php include code. Is there any benefit to going with
<?php include("top.php");?> as opposed to <?php include("top.html");?> ???

In other words: is there any benefit for the included file to also be php? Since I'm still using mainly Frontpage (then copy/pasting the code to my web hosting text editor to save in .php) saving inlcudes in .html lets me simply upload the includes rather than copy/paste them as well. But am I losing out in some other way by not using the same extension as often as possibly (uniformity reasons, etc.)

Many thanks in advance,

AG

Actually, either will work pretty much the same as once it include is called... The php processor is running, even if you have some php scripting written in the .html file... It will be processed.

From a troubleshooting aspect it's always best to name he file with whatever extension of the scripting language you're using... In this case, 6 months down the road, you decide you need to add a small piece of php code to the header.html file... It will actually work, but if you tried to call th file by itself ( manually ), it won't execute the .php code in it...

Naming all your includes the same (.php in your case ), is just good practice.