I am trying to create a site that has a consistent background and top border (or left) but one that will change the center of the page when I hit links within the site.. I am not sure what to call it so I don't know what to search for.. but how can I do this within VSD? Is this what tables are?

Hiya Bearcat,

This isn't something you can do with VSD I don't believe. You'll need to code this in HTML yourself and the best way is use a CSS layout setup (most of the themes that come with HTML Editor are already in that type of format).

Basically, it's a style that lets you have a menu in one container area, a footer in a container type area and even sidebars and then the center being the content area. This setup will still reload the whole page rather than just the center content area reloading on it's own, but this way you specify that you want it loading in the content area and so it does.

Frames are the way it used to be done, but frames sites are not as search engine friendly, nor are they the easiest in the world to setup either for that matter and you'd have to do some big searching on Google or another search engine to find some already made frames themes as they are pretty outdated coding due to CSS taking over the layout styling.

This can also be accomplished using an iframes setup, but that again isn't the most search engine friendly setup nor the most secure.

With the CSS layout you can specify your background for all your pages to remain constant. Locations and sizes etc would all be setup in the CSS Layout, then the code for the menu itself or footer etc. are added to those areas. The border areas can remain constant using Server Side Includes which would allow you the benefit of having to only edit the include pages to update all pages at once. The drawback to the SSI (server side includes) is that those sections won't be previewable on your editor program, and you'd have to setup a server on your computer (see apache.org for help on how to do this) in order to be able to preview the pages on your computer in your browser.

There is a lot of information on all of this all over the forums as well as the internet, and I'm sure you'll have a lot of questions so ask away here too. The best way I can tell you to try this is to get the HTML Editor (get the trial version if you're unsure if you want to use it or not yet) and open up a premade theme and see how it's all setup in the code.

Just to clarify what tables are, they are basically a way to create cells similar to a spreadsheet that you can specify sizes and colors and what goes in them from text to images to links or whatever. Some people have used them (including myself in small doses yet) to help place things on their site easier, but the preferred way these days is using CSS since tables aren't exactly real search engine friendly either.

A lot of what you want to choose to do will be based on how important it is to be search engine friendly. If there is no importance on how easily your site is found in search engines, then by all means try something in frames or an iframe if you find that easier, but it would still be a good idea to give the CSS layout a shot first because it is the best answer to your situation.

Hopefully that answers some of the questions you have, good luck and ask more if this didn't cover it too please

Thanks.. I'll try that.. I already have the HTML editor.. If I have any ??? I'll pop back in here..

Sounds like a plan, gl on it and have fun