I've noticed a few threads on frames.

When I first starting designing my site in '97 I read that framesets weren't advisable - they weren't supported in all browsers and there would be problems with search engines.
I'm thinking of using frames for my faq page to separate index from main content, so is this still true for frames?

I think that frames are a bit 'old fashioned' now, as there are other ways of keeping i.e. a menu and other repeating page elements separated from the content. As far as I know all modern browsers will have no problems with frames, I don't know how they are seen by search engines.

The other ways of linking bits and pieces together are i.e. using either SSI or PHP includes. As to javascripts or CCS, they can be written as separate files and linked to the content pages.

Thanks Inger.
I'm at the "hobbyist level" with site development .
SSI & PHP is beyond my capabilities, I know a bit about CSS and have done simple Javascript methods, but I could set it up much quicker using frames.
My current faq page is all on 1 page, the list of questions takes up a page length,and the answers they link too is at least 10 page lengths longer.
I was thinking of setting it up so that the question list is in a frame on the left side and the answers on the right side.

http://www.drivingnt.com/faq.html#Q50

Hiya Zipper,

I've heard some bad things about frames where SEO is concerned and that things don't always get picked up by the search engines because it's not completely a full page but it's sectioned out. This (I'm assuming totally here) would probably be because there is no connection on the page to your questions and their answers as they aren't on the same page. Makes search engines think your page isn't complete I guess? Not sure the full aspects of what is wrong with them, but I think that has something to do with it.

There are ways around this if you want to check out some of the already setup themes with the separate navigation area or a blank layout in the HTML Editor. These would already be setup for the style of menu basically that you need for what you're trying to do. This would keep your menu in a separate section basically the same as a frame would. Normal navigation menus like this would need to be copied to each page (unless you use the SSI mentioned by Inger) but since this is a one page system there's no need for that part so it should be pretty straight forward to setup for FAQ.

From here you just create anchor tags for the questions to the answers so it goes up and down the page for you. Create a "back to top" type anchor after your answers to take people back to the top where the questions are and that would take care of the whole thing.

Hope that makes sense and if not please let me know, and definitely if you need assistance with this keep asking

Zipper,

Here is the skinny: don't use frames. 1. They are old school. 2. They are not fully supported. 3. They ruin SEO page rank - reason: because google bot cannot travel properly through a web page that is actually made up of several web pages (assuming a 3 frameset). Whats more, when the bot hits a link it expects to move to another page, and yet stays in one place and thus thinks the links are broken.

Why not use SSI. Its fairly straightforward and is an excellent way to do what you are thinking about doing. More importantly, it does not interfere with SEO.

Here's a question for you SSI pushers LOL, I would love to use it on my site, but I'm concerned about the change from .html to .php breaking my SEO (as if I actually have any even LOL). What I mean is, will I end up having to do 301 redirects (which keep breaking my site due to the Wordpress situation) to accommodate those changes? That's really the only thing that truly stops me from doing it. I don't want to have to learn all that too lol, I'm not good with the redirect thing at all. Tried adding some redirects for my Wordpress a little while ago, but it kept breaking my Web Access Manager setups (thanks to Scott & Support for helping find that problem). So, do I need to do that or will the search engines accommodate that change without issues?

SSI is not saved as .php, but .shtml. I think you are thinking of php includes, which is a different beast than what I am referring to. If you google server side includes you will get some good articles that appear on the first page. Most of them explain the method in a simple easy to understand way. Need any other help let us know.

Ahh ok yes I was confusing the 2 types, thanks for clarifying that. I'll give it a google and see what it's all about, thanks Eric

As always, a pleasure.

Normally, the sever will only look for ssi code in an .shtml page, but (and I don't know the specifics), it is also possible to configure the server to look for ssi instructions in all pages even if they end with .html. That's something you can look into.