Was wondering what the differences are when using regions? Like when would you use a certain type of region over another. I have been using editable and it does fine for me but in the book there wasnt really an explanation on Optional/editable optional region/ or repeating regions that I can recall. I remember going through the editable region in cooking place but not the others. Thanks

Hi Keith,

Editable regions are simple regions that can be changed by a client page.

Repeating regions define a common look for an item, like:

<li></li>

Child pages then draw a user interface that allows an end user to add and delete items, and reorder them (with plus, minus, up and down arrow buttons). For each item that is added the repeated region is, eeuh, repeated. For a repeatable item to be editable, it must contain an editable region; otherwise you simply repeat the static markup.

An optional region contains content that can be enabled or disabled in the client page. This allows the child page to determine whether an item is visible or not, but the template designer can determine what gets displayed.

Look in the help under the section "templates, types of regions" for a more thorough explanation of the different template features.

HtH,

Imar
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Imar Spaanjaars
Everyone is unique, except for me.

Hi Imar,

Thanks for the response. Reason I am asking this is I have created a main template for my site which includes Div's specified for my header, footer, nav menus, main content area. I made all of these Div's editable regions within the template. If I create a new page based off this template all works well. However when I add a menu Item say to the footer or the nav menu on the template itself, well when it updates pages based off of this template the change is not applied eventhough it states pages were updated? Any ideas?

Is the stuff you add inside a editable region??

In that case, the page won't be updated, as it could potentially ruin all your pages by resetting the template content....

Imar
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Imar Spaanjaars
Everyone is unique, except for me.

I was doing exactly that Imar. Thanks for this explanation it helped a ton.

Instead of putting a lot of functionality inside templates, you can also take a look at ASP includes. I just wrote a short article about them here: http://Imar.Spaanjaars.Com/QuickDocId.aspx?QUICKDOC=381

ASP includes are not meant to replace DW templates, but you could use them next to templates to make it easier to update the site.

Hope this helps,

Imar
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Imar Spaanjaars
Everyone is unique, except for me.

Thanks for the link Imar I will check it out shortly. I was also just wondering if there is a way to create a non-editable region within an editable one? Thanks

Imar that was a very cool read and i'd like to do this. I am curious though how it would work with a editable region? Say for example I created a <div = "content> </div> for my main content and applied "Editable region" to this particular div. Then I cut and pasted into an "include" file. How would I then add the content to this particular div like paragraph of text with the include being outside of the page I was working in? Or would my includes just be specific to regions that were not going to be edited? Hope I am makin sense here.

You should use includes for repeating content that isn't editable in a child page.

If, for example, you look at this Wrox site, the header and the main menu are ideal candidates for an include. Inside Menu.asp for example you can determine what image to "preselect", as is the case with the P2P Forum button.

Since an ASP include applies to *all* pages that use it, it doesn't make much sense to have a child page override the content for that page.

Does this help?

Imar
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Imar Spaanjaars
Everyone is unique, except for me.

Yes it helps Imar. I'm pretty bummed out though as I thought I was doing a decent job and my site looks good in IE at http:tektown.net:86 but I just looked at the site in Firefox and it looks like complete garbage. I feel like I just spent hours building a puzzle and someone came by and through the pieces all over the floor. I have no clue on how to approach fixing this.